K Lorenz Quotes & Sayings

Falling in love with love
Is falling for make-believe. — Lorenz Hart

Directing, what little I know, is as much knowing when to step in as when to step out. — Robert Lorenz

The neuro-physiological organization which we call instinct functions in a blindly mechanical way, particularly apparent when its function goes wrong. — Konrad Lorenz

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. — Konrad Lorenz

During its development the animal passes through all stages of the animal kingdom. The foetus is a representation of all animal classes in time. — Lorenz Oken

Both Lorenz's eyebrows climbed up his forehead. "The island? Are ju suggesting that the island is alive?"
The vampire shrugged. "I don't know. I do feel something here. It's almost like a vampire presence but something else as well. It's not something I'm used to. It's very strange. Honestly, I do feel as if this island is alive. — A.L. Wilson

We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, becauee we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so. — Edward Norton Lorenz

The 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 Lorenz

In popular culture, the term "butterfly effect" is almost always misused. It has become synonymous with "leverage" - the idea of a small thing that has a big impact, with the implication that, like a lever, it can be manipulated to a desired end. This misses the point of Lorenz's insight. The reality is that small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case. — Stanley McChrystal

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

Hate California
it's cold and it's damp. — Lorenz Hart

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

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. — Konrad Lorenz

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I. — Lorenz Hart

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

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson. — Lorenz Font

The cells are thus the stomachs of which the plant has millions like mouths. — Lorenz Oken

It must be the duty of racial hygiene to be attentive to a more severe elimination of morally inferior human beings than is the case today ... We should literally replace all factors responsible for selection in a natural and free life ... In prehistoric times of humanity, selection for endurance, heroism, social usefulness, etc. was made solely by hostile outside factors. This role must be assumed by a human organization; otherwise, humanity will, for lack of selective factors, be annihilated by the degenerative phenomena that accompany domestication. — Konrad Lorenz

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. — Konrad Lorenz

ROA, KONRAD LORENZ'S RAVEN, raided clotheslines to steal ladies' underwear. Roa had been exploring a neighbor's laundry hung on the line just when he was called. He came, taking a small transportable item with him, a pair of panties. When he got a reward of tasty food, he made the association of panties and food. Henceforth, as expected according to classical conditioning theory, he brought these items on his own to redeem them for savory snacks. — Bernd Heinrich

Hatred of humanity and love of animals make a very bad combination. — Konrad Lorenz

More than any other product of human scientific culture scientific knowledge is the collective property of all mankind. — Konrad Lorenz

Lorenz saw it differently. Yes, you could change the weather. You could make it do something different from what it would otherwise have done. But if you did, then you would never know what it would otherwise have done. It would be like giving an extra shuffle to an already well-shuffled pack of cards. You know it will change your luck, but you don't know whether for better or worse. — James Gleick

All scientific knowledge to which man owes his role as master of the world arose from playful activities. — Konrad Lorenz

But unlike most physicists, Marcus eventually learned Lorenz's lesson, that a deterministic system can produce much more than just periodic behavior. He knew to look for wild disorder, and he knew that islands of structure could appear within the disorder. So he brought to the problem of the Great Red Spot an understanding that a complex system can give rise to turbulence and coherence at the same time. He could work within an emerging discipline that was creating its own tradition of using the computer as an experimental tool. And he was willing to think of himself as a new kind of scientist: not primarily an astronomer, not a fluid dynamicist, not an applied mathematician, but a specialist in chaos. — James Gleick

Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half. — Lorenz Hart

Every danger loses some of its terror once its causes are understood. — Konrad Lorenz

I've seen a film in which Dr Lorenz pointed out the difference between two colonies of cattle egrets, one free and one caged. The free ones, who had to provide for themselves, were monogamous and energetic and kept their numbers within ecologically reasonable limits. The captive egrets were promiscuous, idle, overbreeding and presumably going to hell fast. — Russell Hoban

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. — Konrad Lorenz

In the almost film-like flitting-by of modern life, a man needs something to tell him, from time to time, that he is still himself, and nothing can give him this assurance in so comforting a manner as the "four feet trotting behind". — Konrad Lorenz