Karl Popper Quotes

I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

After September 11, 2001, I was feeling like I really wanted more understanding between cultures. It seemed to me that so much of what happened on September 11 was because people didn't understand each other and were suspicious of each other.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

Most of us recognize how important it is to listen respectfully when our loved ones are talking; but we often forget that it is equally important to talk respectfully when they are listening.

You don't have to wait until people say they accept everything you say until you are actually prepared to sit down and discuss matters with them.

We can not understand each other, if every time we venture out we stick the feather of cocksureness in our caps. No, we can never wholly understand each other, and rise to the level of mutual esteem at least, if we do not invest in that fellow feeling that triumphs over class and creed and race and color.

"We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well?..."

Americans need to see people who are honestly trying to learn from each other, even as we make our own points powerfully and fight for our own values and policies.

Making a wrong decision is understandable. Refusing to search continually for learning is not.

I guess the biggest surprise I got going to Iran was that the Iranians really liked me as an American.

Knowledge of other people's beliefs and ways of thinking must be used to build bridges, not to create conflicts.

It's fun to meet people from throughout the world who you don't have to explain yourself to.

Both times I was in India, I could not get people to listen to each other. I had to literally tell people to listen to each other and tell them that they can't get creative and find alternate solutions if they don't listen to each other. There's a lot of arguing and justifying.

Believing in each culture's right to be understood by the other party without any form of falseness or distortion is paramount.

Maybe you should care sometimes about what foreign people tell you…. Maybe they have fresh eyes. Maybe we can tell Americans what other Americans think who no longer speak to each other.

It’s important for me to hear others position and understand them.

[There must be] recognition of the Other as an interlocutor having rights equal to one’s own. Real dialogue is when you recognize the same dignity in the other. No dialogue is possible between a master and his slave. Dialogue assumes equality…. To understand the Other, first we have to try and know him in his entirety, know his beliefs, his customs, his rites, his civilization.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another

National culture can act as a bridge, instead of an obstacle, to mutual spiritual and intellectual understanding.

We can argue and we can disagree, but we don’t need to poke our fingers in each other’s eyes in order to get our points across.

This is an increasingly diversifying society, and people are coming into much closer contact with each other than they ever did. I find that a problem for a university, because bumping up against people who disagree with you is fundamental to the creation of new knowledge. And so universities can't go silent. You can't have a place where it's not permitted to make a certain kind of argument. But you can have a place which forbids epithets to be thrown at people.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

What I've learned - after working for, I guess, some time now - is when you're approaching a relationship like that, like, any working relationship, it's good to be open. To know that someone might have a different way of doing things and listen to them. And hopefully, you come to a common understanding.

I think that's important: to know 'the other,' as a means of coming to understanding.