Science May Be Described As The Art

The Open Society Is One In Which Men Have Learned To Be To Some Extent Critical Of Taboos, And To Base Decisions On The Authority Of Their Own Intelligence.

But It Is Certainly Not Possible To Insist On One Hand That The Formalism Is Complete And To Insist On The Other Hand That Its Application To 'the Actual' Actually Demands A Step Which Cannot Be Derived From It.

We Know A Great Deal, But Our Ignorance Is Sobering And Boundless. With Each Step Forward, With Each Problem Which We Solve, We Not Only Discover New And Unsolved Problems, But We Also Discover That Where We Believed That We Were Standing On Firm And Safe Ground, All Things Are, In Truth, Insecure And In A State Of Flux.

It Is Wrong To Think That Belief In Freedom Always Leads To Victory; We Must Always Be Prepared For It To Lead To Defeat. If We Choose Freedom, Then We Must Be Prepared To Perish Along With It.

Aestheticism And Radicalism Must Lead Us To Jettison Reason, And To Replace It By A Desperate Hope For Political Miracles. This Irrational Attitude Which Springs From Intoxication With Dreams Of A Beautiful World Is What I Call Romanticism. It May Seek Its Heavenly City In The Past Or In The Future; It May Preach 'back To Nature' Or 'forward To A World Of Love And Beauty'; But Its Appeal Is Always To Our Emotions Rather Than To Reason. Even With The Best Intentions Of Making Heaven On Earth It Only Succeeds In Making It A Hell - That Hell Which Man Alone Prepares For His Fellow-men.