Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.
Konrad LorenzThe 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 LorenzI see the creative accomplishments of which highly gifted humans are capable as special cases of the universal creative process, that game played by everyone against everyone else, from which wells up all that has never been before.
Konrad LorenzIt is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
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 LorenzThe 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 LorenzHistorians 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 LorenzThe truth about an animal is far more exciting and altogether more beautiful than all the myths woven about it.
Konrad LorenzMost 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 LorenzThe fidelity of a dog is a precious gift demanding no less binding moral responsibilities than the friendship of a human being.
Konrad LorenzNatural selection does not give any preference at all to anything that, in the long run, could be advantageous for the species but blindly rewards everything that, momentarily, affords greater procreative success.
Konrad LorenzAll scientific knowledge to which man owes his role as master of the world arose from playful activities.
Konrad LorenzPhilosophers 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 LorenzThe 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 LorenzThe neuro-physiological organization which we call instinct functions in a blindly mechanical way, particularly apparent when its function goes wrong.
Konrad LorenzIf you confine yourself to this Skinnerian technique, you study nothing but the learning apparatus and you leave out everything that is different in octopi, crustaceans, insects and vertebrates. In other words, you leave out everything that makes a pigeon a pigeon, a rat a rat, a man a man, and, above all, a healthy man healthy and a sick man sick.
Konrad LorenzIn 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.
Konrad LorenzEvery mutation through a new combination of genetic factors that provides the organism with a new opportunity for coming to terms with the conditions of its environment signifies no more and no less than that new information about this environment has got into that organic system. Adaptation is essentially a cognitive process.
Konrad LorenzMore than any other product of human scientific culture scientific knowledge is the collective property of all mankind.
Konrad LorenzEvil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is that which we perceive as a value.
Konrad LorenzI 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 LorenzThere is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog
Konrad LorenzI 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 LorenzOne of the most dangerously vicious circles menacing the continued existence of all mankind arises through that grim striving for the highest possible position within the ranked order, in other words, the reckless pursuit of power which combines with an insatiable greed of neurotic proportions that the results of acquired power confer.
Konrad LorenzI believe that present day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive
Konrad LorenzA 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.
Konrad LorenzIt 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.
Konrad LorenzThe rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself is actually a good example of an inexpedient development caused entirely by competition between members of the same species. Human beings of today are attacked by so-called manager diseases, high blood pressure, renal atrophy, gastric ulcers, and torturing neuroses: they succumb to barbarism because they have no more time for cultural interests.
Konrad LorenzAll 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 LorenzI believe-and human psychologists, particularly psychoanalysts should test this-that present-day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive. It is more than probable that the evil effects of the human aggressive drives, explained by Sigmund Freud as the results of a special death wish, simply derive from the fact that in prehistoric times intra-specific selection bred into man a measure of aggression drive for which in the social order today he finds no adequate outlet.
Konrad LorenzEvery 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 LorenzThe 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 LorenzWe had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.
Konrad LorenzAll 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 LorenzThe instinctive need to be the member of a closely knit group fighting for common ideals may grow so strong that it becomes inessential what these ideals are.
Konrad LorenzThe 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 LorenzVisualize 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