Konrad Lorenz Quotes

1903–1989 Austria

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (November 7, 1903 – February 27, 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist, and ornithologist. He is one of the recipients of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Austria
Academics
Nobel laureates
Psychologists
Zoologists

Random Konrad Lorenz quote

10 quotes

It is a good thing for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast.

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

On Aggression (1963)

We are the highest achievement reached so far by the great constructors of evolution. We are their "latest" but certainly not their last word.

On Aggression (1963)

Our freest will underlies strict moral laws, and one of the reasons for our longing for freedom is to prevent our obeying other laws than these.

On Aggression (1963)

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

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....

Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (1973)

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.

On Aggression (1963)

I now come to the third great obstacle to human self-knowledge, to the belief — deeply rooted in our western culture — that what can be explained in terms of natural science has no values. This belief springs from an exaggeration of Kant's values-philosophy, the consequence of the idealistic dichotomy of the world into the external world of things and the internal laws of human reason.

On Aggression (1963)

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.

Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (1973)

The worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. For the person who knows something about animals it is truly heart-rending to watch how a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her fellow-cage mates to search there in vain for cover.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Konrad Lorenz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.