Top 15 Konrad Lorenz Quotes

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

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.

I consider early childhood events as most essential to a man’s scientific and philosophical development.

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.

‘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.

Barking dogs occasionally bite, but laughing men hardly ever shoot.

I believe that present day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive.

I have found the missing link between the higher ape and civilized man; it is we.

We do not take humor seriously enough.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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