Quotes from Konrad Lorenz

In science, new ideas are at first completely neglected, later fiercely attacked, and finally regarded as well known.

More than any other product of human scientific culture scientific knowledge is the collective property of all mankind.

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.

It ought to be realized by all dog owners that obesity shortens a dog's life quite considerably, a life which is much too short anyhow.

There is indeed the possibility that the evolutionary process has, in gray antiquity, bred into us an excess of aggression.

When I was about ten, I discovered evolution by reading a book by Wilhelm Boelsche and seeing a picture of Archaeopteryx.

The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.

Practically all animals which move fast in a homogeneous medium have found means of giving their body a streamlined shape, thereby reducing friction to a minimum.

'I don't need brains,' says the billionaire contemptuously. 'I'm brainy enough myself!' The broker cries out in desperation, 'What, in heaven's name, do you want?' 'Goodness,' is the answer.

I grew up in the large house and the larger garden of my parents in Altenberg. They were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals.

Just thinking that my dog loves me more than I love him, I feel shame.

Hatred of humanity and love of animals make a very bad combination.

We do not take humor seriously enough.

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

In the course of evolution, it constantly happens that, independently of each other, two different forms of life take similar, parallel paths in adapting themselves to the same external circumstances.

From a neighbour, I got a one-day-old duckling and found, to my intense joy, that it transferred its following response to my person. At the same time, my interest became irreversibly fixated on water fowl, and I became an expert on their behaviour even as a child.

The father-mother family with two children isolated in a city flat is already insufficient.

I believe I've found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.

We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.

Ethologists are often accused of drawing false analogies between animal and human behaviour. However, no such thing as a false analogy exists: an analogy can be more or less detailed and, hence, more or less informative.

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

We do not take humor seriously enough.

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.

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.