A biography for Konrad Lorenzhasn’t been written yet.
“When I was about ten, I discovered evolution by reading a book by Wilhelm Boelsche and seeing a picture of Archaeopteryx.”
“We do not take humor seriously enough.”
“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.”
“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.”
“Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.”
“I believe that present day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive.”
“The truth about an animal is far more exciting and altogether more beautiful than all the myths woven about it.”
“Barking dogs occasionally bite, but laughing men hardly ever shoot.”
“More than any other product of human scientific culture scientific knowledge is the collective property of all mankind.”
“We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.”
“The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.”
“Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value.”
“Philosophers 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.”
“Practically all animals which move fast in a homogeneous medium have found means of giving their body a streamlined shape, thereby reducing friction to a minimum.”
“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.”
“Whenever we find, in two forms of life that are unrelated to each other, a similarity of form or of behaviour patterns which relates to more than a few minor details, we assume it to be caused by parallel adaptation to the same life-preserving function.”
“The father-mother family with two children isolated in a city flat is already insufficient.”