Karl Popper Quotes on Truth
Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934, English translation 1959) and Conjectures and Refutations (1963) gave twentieth-century philosophy of science its most influential alternative to the verificationist program of the Vienna Circle. The central methodological doctrine — falsifiability as the demarcation criterion between science and non-science — frames scientific inquiry as the conjectural production of bold hypotheses that are then ruthlessly subjected to attempted refutation, with truth as the regulative ideal toward which a never-completed sequence of corroborated conjectures successively approaches without ever attaining final possession. The framework, developed across Popper’s broader work in social and political philosophy (The Open Society and Its Enemies), shaped the postwar reception of philosophy of science and the broader liberal-democratic engagement with the fallibilist epistemology that distinguishes Popper’s contribution from his Logical Positivist contemporaries.
Quotes
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“We do not know: we can only guess.”
Ch. 10 "Corroboration, or How a Theory Stands up to Tests", section 85: The Path of Science, p. 278. -
“If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations.”
The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 29 The Unity of Method -
“Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.”
As quoted in My Universe : A Transcendent Reality (2011) by Alex Vary, Part II -
“Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.”
Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations", Section VII -
Attributed to Karl Popper:
“It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.”
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“Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer—whether animal or man—perishes with his false beliefs.”
Epistemology Without A Knowing Subject (1967)