The World Motivation
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
“No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.”
— Karl Popper · Attitude
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
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.
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.
With the feminist movement - a good movement which I support - there's been more overt criticism of the male, an attitude that men are failing to understand the finer nature of women, failing to appreciate their needs, failing to support them, failing to be compassionate.
In individual industries where female labour pays an important role, any movement advocating better wages, shorter working hours, etc., would not be doomed from the start because of the attitude of those women workers who are not organized.
I've always said that your attitude is your best friend and your worst enemy.
When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order.
Vampires are so old that they don't need to impress anyone anymore. They're comfortable in their own skin. It's this enigmatic strength that's very romantic and old-fashioned. I think it goes back to something of a Victorian attitude of finding a strong man who's going to look after his woman.