Lorenz Quotes

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

I had a dream I was in heaven standing at the gates. They shined so brightly ass they were gold and reflecting all the light. I could see you there just on the other side so I screamed your name. But the angels, they wouldn't let me in. They wouldn't let me have you, so I stuck dinomite to the locks and blew the gates away. I blew the angels away just so I could hold you for a single second more before hell ripped me away. ~ Kerri E. Lorenz

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

I'm a great believer in conversational rhythm. I think in terms of rhythmic dialogue. It's so easy, you can talk naturally. It's like peas rolling off a knife. Take the great screen actors and actresses, Bette Davis, Eddie Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy. They all talk in rhythm. And rhythm and movement are the life of the screen. ~ Lorenz Hart

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

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

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

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

Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half. ~ Lorenz Hart

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

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

Man is the summit, the crown of nature's development, and must comprehend everything that has preceded him, even as the fruit includes within itself all the earlier developed parts of the plant. In a word, Man must represent the whole world in miniature. ~ Lorenz Oken

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

I am not your Doll, and I will not take it easy. The more you fight the more pain I will bring to you. There is no longer a string that can be pulled to make me all cute and cuddly again. ~ Kerri E. 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

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

During its development the animal passes through all stages of the animal kingdom. The foetus is a representation of all animal classes in time. ~ Lorenz Oken

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

Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? I learned about it in Science last year… Basically, the butterfly effect is a chaos theory, attributed to a guy named Edward Lorenz. Here's the Clffnotes version: A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, and it sets off a tornado in Texas. It means the smallest moments of the past, even the ones that don't have anything to do with us, affect our future, and our future selves ~ Gwendolyn Heasley

Hate California
it's cold and it's damp. ~ Lorenz Hart

Wide awake I can make my most fantastic dreams come true. ~ Lorenz Hart

For me, baseball just brings up a lot of nostalgic, happy feelings because I enjoyed it as a kid, and I liked being out there playing in the sun, and it was a simpler time for all of us. ~ Robert Lorenz

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

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

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

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I. ~ Lorenz Hart

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

The eye takes a person into the world. The ear brings the world into a human being. ~ Lorenz Oken

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

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

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

Physio-philosophy has to show how, and in accordance indeed with what laws, the Material took its origin; and, therefore, how something derived its existence from nothing. It has to portray the first periods of the world's development from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms, they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and in Man attained self-consciousness. ~ Lorenz Oken

When a butterfly flutters its wings in one part of the world, it can eventually cause a hurricane in another. ~ Edward Norton 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

Could it be that we made arbitrary decisions at some point in the past (like the goslings that adopted Lorenz as their parent) and have built our lives on them ever since, assuming that the original decisions were wise? ~ Dan Ariely

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

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

I sit here and tell everyone else they are beautiful just the way they are flaws and all. Then I turn to the mirror and pick myself apart. Huh I guess everyone is a hypocrite in one way or another. ~ Kerri E. Lorenz

This is it, this was my new home, or prison I wasn't entirely sure yet which. I am not sure if I am ready for anything that is to come, but it seems I have very little choice. ~ Kerri E. 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

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

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

Mathematicians seem to have no difficulty in creating new concepts faster than the old ones become well understood. ~ Edward Norton Lorenz

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

When love congeals It soon reveals The faint aroma of performing seals, The double-crossing of a pair of heels. I wish I were in love again! ~ Lorenz Hart

I've seen a film in which Dr Lorenz pointed out the difference between two colonies of cattle egrets, one free and one caged. The free ones, who had to provide for themselves, were monogamous and energetic and kept their numbers within ecologically reasonable limits. The captive egrets were promiscuous, idle, overbreeding and presumably going to hell fast. ~ Russell Hoban

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

How we love sequestering, where no pests are pestering. ~ Lorenz Hart

Love isn't something you do, it isn't something you can make happen. Love is an instinct, a deep part of the human soul that reaches out of you to find the one meant to be with you. You can't fight it, nor can you bend it to your will. Just like breathing and eating, it is a part of you that you cannot live without. ~ Kerri E. 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

Let's here it for modern dentistry, eh? I said, and he grimaced. Actually, as much as people dislike going to the dentist now, try doing it two hundred years ago, when having a cavity meant some quack knocking it out with a chisel and a hammer in the market square. With no anesthetic. ~ Cate Tiernan

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