---
title: "1 Psychoanalysis Marxism Quotes By Karl Popper"
description: "1 Psychoanalysis Marxism quotes by Karl Popper. Plus more from Karl Popper and more Psychoanalysis Marxism sayings from other authors."
image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6b7/karl-popper-2167_adler_the-difficulties-connected-with-my-crite_2369907.jpg"
---

> [“The difficulties connected with my criterion of demarcation (D) are important, but must not be exaggerated. It is vague, since it is a methodological rule, and since the demarcation between science and nonscience is vague. But it is more than…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/the-difficulties-connected-with-my-criterion-of-demarcation-d-are/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6b7/karl-popper-2167_adler_the-difficulties-connected-with-my-crite_2369907.jpg)

## More by Karl Popper

> [Science is not a system of certain, or -established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality... And…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/science-is-not-a-system-of-certain-or-established-statements-nor-is/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [“As indicated by our example, methodological nominalism is nowadays fairly generally accepted in the natural sciences. The problems of the social sciences, on the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/as-indicated-by-our-example-methodological-nominalism-is-nowadays/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/science-is-perhaps-the-only-human-activity-in-which-errors-are/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [A system is empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/a-system-is-empirical-or-scientific-only-if-it-is-capable-of-being/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/bold-ideas-unjustified-anticipations-and-speculative-thought-are-our/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [ \[The aim of science is\] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/the-aim-of-science-is-to-explain-what-so-far-has-taken-to-be-an/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [There can be no ultimate statements science: there can be no statements in science which can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/there-can-be-no-ultimate-statements-science-there-can-be-no/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn't even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/evolution-is-not-a-fact-evolution-doesn-t-even-qualify-as-a-theory-or/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [I am opposed to looking upon logic as a kind of game. ... One might think that it is a matter of choice or…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/i-am-opposed-to-looking-upon-logic-as-a-kind-of-game-one-might-think/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/the-history-of-science-like-the-history-of-all-human-ideas-is-a/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/good-tests-kill-flawed-theories-we-remain-alive-to-guess-again/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [There is no pure, disinterested, theory-free observation,](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/there-is-no-pure-disinterested-theory-free-observation/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [We have the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should tolerate even them whenever we can do so without running a great risk;…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/we-have-the-right-not-to-tolerate-the-intolerant-we-should-tolerate/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/better-our-hypotheses-die-for-our-errors-than-ourselves/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

> [“Every time we proceed to explain some conjectural law or theory by a new conjectural theory of a higher degree of universality, we are…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/karl-popper/every-time-we-proceed-to-explain-some-conjectural-law-or-theory-by-a/)

[Karl Popper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/karl-popper/)

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                        "text": "“The difficulties connected with my criterion of demarcation (D) are important, but must not be exaggerated. It is vague, since it is a methodological rule, and since the demarcation between science and nonscience is vague. But it is more than sharp enough to make a distinction between many physical theories on the one hand, and metaphysical theories, such as psychoanalysis, or Marxism (in its present form), on the other. This is, of course, one of my main theses; and nobody who has not understood it can be said to have understood my theory. The situation with Marxism is, incidentally, very different from that with psychoanalysis. Marxism was once a scientific theory: it predicted that capitalism would lead to increasing misery and, through a more or less mild revolution, to socialism; it predicted that this would happen first in the technically highest developed countries; and it predicted that the technical evolution of the 'means of production' would lead to social, political, and ideological developments, rather than the other way round. But the (so-called) socialist revolution came first in one of the technically backward countries. And instead of the means of production producing a new ideology, it was Lenin's and Stalin's ideology that Russia must push forward with its industrialization ('Socialism is dictatorship of the proletariat plus electrification') which promoted the new development of the means of production. Thus one might say that Marxism was once a science, but one which was refuted by some of the facts which happened to clash with its predictions (I have here mentioned just a few of these facts). However, Marxism is no longer a science; for it broke the methodological rule that we must accept falsification, and it immunized itself against the most blatant refutations of its predictions. Ever since then, it can be described only as nonscience—as a metaphysical dream, if you like, married to a cruel reality. Psychoanalysis is a very different case. It is an interesting psychological metaphysics (and no doubt there is some truth in it, as there is so often in metaphysical ideas), but it never was a science. There may be lots of people who are Freudian or Adlerian cases: Freud himself was clearly a Freudian case, and Adler an Adlerian case. But what prevents their theories from being scientific in the sense here described is, very simply, that they do not exclude any physically possible human behaviour. Whatever anybody may do is, in principle, explicable in Freudian or Adlerian terms. (Adler's break with Freud was more Adlerian than Freudian, but Freud never looked on it as a refutation of his theory.) The point is very clear. Neither Freud nor Adler excludes any particular person's acting in any particular way, whatever the outward circumstances. Whether a man sacrificed his life to rescue a drowning, child (a case of sublimation) or whether he murdered the child by drowning him (a case of repression) could not possibly be predicted or excluded by Freud's theory; the theory was compatible with everything that could happen—even without any special immunization treatment. Thus while Marxism became non-scientific by its adoption of an immunizing strategy, psychoanalysis was immune to start with, and remained so. In contrast, most physical theories are pretty free of immunizing tactics and highly falsifiable to start with. As a rule, they exclude an infinity of conceivable possibilities.”",
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