Michael > Michael's Quotes

“What is tolerance? It is a necessary consequence of humanity. We are all fallible, let us then pardon each other's follies. This is the first principle of natural right.”
― Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
― Karl Popper

“The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.”
― Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

“What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach. We may admit that our groping is often inspired, but we must be on our guard against the belief, however deeply felt, that our inspiration carries any authority, divine or otherwise. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far it may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without danger, the idea that truth is beyond human authority. And we must retain it. For without this idea there can be no objective standards of inquiry; no criticism of our conjectures; no groping for the unknown; no quest for knowledge.”
― Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

“Every time we proceed to explain some conjectural law or theory by a new conjectural theory of a higher degree of universality, we are discovering more about the world, trying to penetrate deeper into its secrets. And every time we succeed in falsifying a theory of this kind, we make an important new discovery. For these falsifications are most important. They teach us the unexpected; and they reassure us that, although our theories are made by ourselves, although they are our own inventions, they are none the less genuine assertions about the world; for they can clash with something we never made.”
― Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach

“People would never fall in love if they hadn't heard love talked about.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

“There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.”
― Francois La Rochefoucauld

“The intellect is always fooled by the heart.”
― La Rochefoucauld

“L'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld