Karl Popper Quotes

The true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched when we say that science alone is capable of verification.

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen! If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.

Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

Science has not been successful by making up explanations of things that fit with the current social fabric.

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

Science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea’s worth

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

This is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

It should now be clear why the method of Philosophy is so different from that of the natural sciences. Experiments are not made, because they would be utterly useless.

I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science. All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.