Karl Popper

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian-born British philosopher of science and professor at the London School of Economics. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. Popper is perhaps best known for repudiating the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science; for advancing empirical falsifiability as the criterion for distinguishing scientific theory from non-science; and for his defense of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism which he took to make the flourishing of the "open society" possible.

Quotes

"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification."

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"Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle: the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative."

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"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."

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