Konrad Lorenz Quotes - Page 3

Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.

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

In nature we find not only that which is expedient, but also everything which is not so inexpedient as to endanger the existence of the species.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.