Konrad Lorenz Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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.

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...

The fidelity of a dog is a precious gift.

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

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

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.

All too willingly man sees himself as the centre of the universe, as something not belonging to the rest of nature but standing apart as a different and higher being. Many people cling to this error and remain deaf to the wisest command ever given by a sage, the famous "Know thyself" inscribed in the temple of Delphi.

...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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

A man sufficiently gifted with humor is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did.

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.

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

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.

We do not take humor seriously enough.

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

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

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.