Karl Popper Quotes

Do not imagine that what we have said of the insufficiency of our understanding and of its limited extent is an assertion founded only on the Bible: for philosophers likewise assert the same, and perfectly understand it,- without having regard to any religion or opinion.

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

I'm an idiot, basically. I don't think that I'm a dumb guy, but I also realise that I have access to about 0.1 percent of the information that I need to have a truly informed opinion about half the stuff I talk about. I'm like that loud guy in the bar, who kind of makes sense for about ten minutes, and then you realise he flunked everything at high school so you just laugh at him.

Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete.

I mistrust the satisfaction which makes a display of the possession of Infinity; that is called fatuity in philosophic terms.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant.

The unanswerable mysteries... the attitude that all is uncertain... to summarize it - the humility of the intellect.

A fool who recognises his own ignorance is thereby in fact a wise man, but a fool who considers himself wise - that is what one really calls a fool.

I'm suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.

Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself.

Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder.

A great soul is called Saragrahi that means one who is always looking for the essence of every situation that comes before us.

I am more stupid about some things than others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person.

To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.

The ability to retain a child's view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare - and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.

Students who have attended my [medical] lectures may remember that I try not only to teach them what we know, but also to realise how little this is: in every direction we seem to travel but a very short way before we are brought to a stop; our eyes are opened to see that our path is beset with doubts, and that even our best-made knowledge comes but too soon to an end.

The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

Even great spirits have only their five-fingers' breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.

A man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all the doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false.

Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.