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Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. (All that technology may say about ends is whether they are compatible with each other or realizable.)

— Karl Popper The Poverty of Historicism (1957)

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More quotes by Karl Popper

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

The Open Universe : An Argument for Indeterminism (1992)

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)

All things living are in search of a better world.

In Search of a Better World (1984)

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We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.

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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Alfred North Whitehead An Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

John Gilmore

If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.

Pope Benedict XVI

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Karl Popper (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.