Karl Popper Quotes

I think irrationality is one of the scariest things in the world.

When we are accustomed to use bad reasons for proving natural effects, we are not willing to receive good reasons when they are discovered

I'm impervious to logic.

When emotion supersedes reason ... gullibility must follow.

But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.

When reasons are weak, attitudes stiffen.

In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.

We don't look at problems logically, we look at them emotionally. We look at them through the guts. We look at them as if we're doing a high school problem, like what is beautiful, what makes me recognized among my peers. We don't go and think about things. We, as a society, don't wish to engage in rational thought.

When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally.

I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason.

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

You'll find superstition a contagious thing. Some people let it get the better of them.

Dogmatism makes for scientific anemia.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Emotion is a rotten base for politics.

Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.

… people reject the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views.

To me, the worst thing is to just be knee-jerk and emotional.

It's awfully hard to get into the head of a liberal. Instead of logic and reason, they are drawn to emotions and feelings.

Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.

One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.

God designed the stomach to eject what is bad for it, but not the human brain.

I no longer idolize reason. I have come to accept that ninety percent of what we do is irrational and that we spend what little rational thought we have in justifying our irrationality.

Man is many things, but he is not rational.