Konrad Lorenz Quotes

I believe that both art and the human striving for cognitive comprehension are manifest forms of the grand game in which nothing more is stipulated than the game's rules; both art and actively solicited perceptions are but special cases of the recurring creative act to which we owe our existence. ~ Konrad Lorenz

There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog ~ Konrad Lorenz

Nothing can better express the feelings of the scientist towards the great unity of the laws of nature than in Immanuel Kant's words: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe: the stars above me and the moral law within me." ... Would he, who did not yet know of the evolution of the world of organisms, be shocked that we consider the moral law within us not as something given, a priori, but as something which has arisen by natural evolution, just like the laws of the heavens? ~ Konrad Lorenz

The cat is a wild animal that inhabits the homes of humans. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Every danger loses some of its terror once its causes are understood. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The scientist knows very well that he is approaching ultimate truth only in an asymptotic curve and is barred from ever reaching it; but at the same time he is proudly aware of being indeed able to determine whether a statement is a nearer or a less near approach to the truth. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The human soul is very much older than the human mind. ~ Konrad Lorenz

He who has seen the intimate beauty of nature cannot tear himself away from it again. He must become either a poet or a naturalist and, if his eyes are keen and his powers of observation sharp enough, he may well become both. ~ Konrad Lorenz

In the almost film-like flitting-by of modern life, a man needs something to tell him, from time to time, that he is still himself, and nothing can give him this assurance in so comforting a manner as the "four feet trotting behind". ~ Konrad Lorenz

I would rather have a Scot come from Scotland togovern the people of this kingdom well and justly, than that you should govern them ill in the sight of all the world. ~ Konrad Lorenz

I believe that present day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Humor and knowledge are the two great hopes of our culture. ~ Konrad Lorenz

But even if, as Johnson argues, power and dominance serve no meaningful purpose, they always incur costs. In biology, the cost can be painfully visible. During courtship, the argus cock pheasant spreads his large secondary wing feathers, which are decorated with beautiful eye spots; the bigger they are, the more they stimulate the female. And the longer the feathers, the more progeny the cock will produce. So the more beautiful cocks produce more descendants. That should be a competitive advantage. But the evolution of the argus pheasant has run itself into a blind alley because the most gorgeous cock has feathers so huge and unwieldy that they may cause him to be eaten by a predator, because he can't fly away fast enough. Oskar Heinroth, the teacher of Konrad Lorenz, commented: 'Next to the wings of the argus pheasant, the hectic life of western civilized man is the most stupid product of intra-specific selection! ~ Margaret Heffernan

The attitude of the true scientist towards the real limits of human understanding was unforgettably impressed on me in early youth by the obviously unpremeditated words of a great biologist; Alfred Kuhn finished a lecture to the Austrian Academy of Science with Goethe 's words, "It is the greatest joy of the man of thought to have explored the explorable and then calmly to revere the inexplorable." After the last word he hesitated, raised his hand in repudiation and cried, above the applause, "No, not calmly, gentlemen; not calmly ! ~ Konrad Lorenz

Most people have forgotten how to live with living creatures, with living systems and that, in turn, is the reason why man, whenever he comes into contact with nature, threatens to kill the natural system in which and from which he live. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Man has been driven out of the paradise in which he could trust his instincts. ~ Konrad Lorenz

All scientific knowledge to which man owes his role as master of the world arose from playful activities. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The bond with a dog is as lasting as the ties of this Earth can ever be. ~ Konrad Lorenz

I have found the missing link between the higher ape and civilized man: It is we. ~ Konrad Lorenz

I am convinced that of all the people on the two sides of the great curtain, the space pilots are the least likely to hate each other. Like the late Erich von Holst, I believe that the tremendous and otherwise not quite explicable public interest in space flight arises from the subconscious realization that it helps to preserve peace. May it continue to do so! ~ Konrad Lorenz

All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering ... tends instead to favor humanity's destruction. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The truth about an animal is far more exciting and altogether more beautiful than all the myths woven about it. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The human mind, in taking us down the path of technocracy, has become the adversary of life itself and collaterally the adversary of the human soul. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Visualize yourself confronted with the task of killing, one after the other, a cabbage, a fly, a fish, a lizard, a guinea pig, a cat, a dog, a monkey and a baby chimpanzee. In the unlikely case that you should experience no greater inhibitions in killing the chimpanzee than in destroying the cabbage or the fly, my advice to you is to commit suicide at your earliest possible convenience, because you are a weird monstrosity and a public danger. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing. ~ Konrad Lorenz

It must be the duty of racial hygiene to be attentive to a more severe elimination of morally inferior human beings than is the case today ... We should literally replace all factors responsible for selection in a natural and free life ... In prehistoric times of humanity, selection for endurance, heroism, social usefulness, etc. was made solely by hostile outside factors. This role must be assumed by a human organization; otherwise, humanity will, for lack of selective factors, be annihilated by the degenerative phenomena that accompany domestication. ~ Konrad Lorenz

There must be something unique about man because otherwise, evidently, the ducks would be lecturing about Konrad Lorenz, and the rats would be writing papers about B. F. Skinner. ~ Jacob Bronowski

There is no greater sin against the spirit of true art, no more contemptible dilettanism than to use artistic license as a specious cover for ignorance of fact. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Since my first discussions of ecological problems with Professor John Day around 1950 and since reading Konrad Lorenz's "King Solomon's Ring," I have become increasingly interested in the study of animals for what they might teach us about man, and the study of man as an animal. I have become increasingly disenchanted with what the thinkers of the so-called Age of Enlightenment tell us about the nature of man, and with what the formal religions and doctrinaire political theorists tell us about the same subject. ~ Allan McLeod Cormack

The distance at which all shooting weapons take effect screens the killer against the stimulus sensation which would otherwise activate his killing inhibitions. The deep, emotional layers of our personality simply do not register the fact that the crooking of the finger to release a shot tears the entrails of another man. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Barking dogs occasionally bite, but laughing men hardly ever shoot. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The fidelity of a dog is a precious gift demanding no less binding moral responsibilities than the friendship of a human being. ~ Konrad Lorenz

All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that moulded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and the system of behaviour of a species are parts of the same whole ... Wordsworth is right: there is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no correspondingly adequate inhibition. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The missing link between animals and the real human being is most likely ourselves. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality ... Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual. [ ... ] One asks, which is more damaging to modern humanity: the thirst for money or consuming haste ... in either case, fear plays a very important role: the fear of being overtaken by one's competitors, the fear of becoming poor, the fear of making wrong decisions or the fear of not being up to snuff ... ~ Konrad Lorenz

Man appears to be the missing link between anthropoid apes and human beings. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The appeal of the cat lies in the very fact that she has formed no close bond with [man], that she has the uncompromising independence of a tiger or a leopard while she is hunting in his stables and barns: that she still remains mysterious and remote when she is rubbing herself gently against the legs of her mistress or purring contentedly in front of the fire. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Most of the vices and mortal sins condemned today correspond to inclinations that were purely adaptive or at least harmless in primitive man. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The whole of a human being is merely a vertebra. ~ Lorenz Oken

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson. ~ Lorenz Font

Directing, what little I know, is as much knowing when to step in as when to step out. ~ Robert Lorenz

You're like something drawn with the sun's fire, and I can take only little glimpses of you. ~ Kenneth Oppel

Quitting is a hiccup for losers. And down they go. ~ Lorenz Font

In opposition to the absolutely and directly false Heideggerian theses attributing to Aquinas an onto-theo-logical metaphysics of Being, Aquinas's actual and genuine conception of God is articulated in the famous formulation according to which God is ipsum esse per se subsistens, Being itself subsisting through itself.

God is not a being (ens,) among other beings, thus not anything like the highest, first, or maximal being.

(p. 43) ~ Lorenz B. Puntel

I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday. ~ Konrad Adenauer

Only the stupidest calves choose their own butcher. ~ Konrad Adenauer

For Lorenz, virgins were not a part of his world. He was skeptical of many things I said. Later, when the serology reports proved that what I had said was not a lie, that I had been a virgin, and that I was telling the truth, he could not respect me enough. I think he felt responsible, somehow. It was, after all, in his world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime. ~ Alice Sebold

I do not ask to be young again; all I want is to go on getting older. ~ Konrad Adenauer

Give me a sword and I will slay a man, give me a voice and I will slay a country. ~ Konrad

You have to take people as they are because there are no others. ~ Konrad Adenauer

The rattling of the relays of the Z4 was the only interesting thing to be experienced in Zurich's night life! ~ Konrad Zuse

A thick hide is a gift from God. ~ Konrad Adenauer

Comfort leads to complacency, and complacency kills. For this reason, I believe that we all should be a little uncoomfortable in our jobs. ~ Stephen R. Lorenz

Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song. ~ Konrad Von Gesner

It's almost funny, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"How some animals are worth more than others?"
"Well," he handed Konrad a sugar cube from a tin on the shelf. "It isn't just the animal; it's the type of animal."
"Color, shape, size? If people pay for an animal based on what it looks like, what does that say about them?"
"It isn't necessarily what they look like." He frowned. "It's about where they come from."
"That's silly," she said. ~ Amanda Lance

The cells are thus the stomachs of which the plant has millions like mouths. ~ Lorenz Oken

Two basic values, autonomy and solidarity, serve as helpful prompters in any decision-making process. ~ Gyorgy Konrad

That was a piece I did in 1963 with Konrad Lueg in a department store, in the furniture department. It was announced in some papers as an exhibition opening, but the people who came didn't know that it was to be a sort of Happening. I don't think it is quite right that it has become so famous anyhow. It was just a lot of fun, and the word itself, Capitalist Realism, hit just right. But it wasn't such a big deal. ~ Gerhard Richter

All human organs eventually tire, only the tongue doesn't. ~ Konrad Adenauer

Kennedy cooked the soup that Johnson had to eat. ~ Konrad Adenauer

As soon as you are complicated, you are ineffectual. ~ Konrad Adenauer

Like Alan Turing, Zuse was educated in a system that focused on a child's emotional and philosophical life as well as his intellectual life, and at the end of school, like Turing, Zuse found himself to be something of an outsider - to the disappointment of his very conventional parents, he no longer believed in God or religion.
(Jane Smiley (2010). The Man Who Invented the Computer) ~ Konrad Zuse

If Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Cracow, Warsaw, and Berlin belong to Europe, then why not Leningrad, why not Moscow--indeed, why stop before Vladivostok? It is all part of Eurasia, there is no state frontier between...I would like to think of myself as some utopian son of Europe, able to touch the Pacific at San Francisco with one outstretched arm and at Vladivostok with the other, and keeping the peace everywhere within my embrace. ~ George Konrad

All that the socialists understand about money is the fact that they want it from others. ~ Konrad Adenauer

God designed the stomach to eject what is bad for it, but not the human brain. ~ Konrad Adenauer

Lorenz was the charismatic, flamboyant thinker - he didn't conduct a single statistical analysis in his life - while Tinbergen did the nitty-gritty of actual data collection. ~ Frans De Waal

Blue Moon,
You saw me standing alone,
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own. ~ Lorenz Hart

There are things about which I don't even talk to myself. ~ Konrad Adenauer