Konrad Lorenz Quotes

The modern technological world appears overwhelming to many people. It drives some to pessimism and despair. It makes others doubt the future of mankind unless we retreat to simpler lives and even to the ways of our ancestors. What these people fail to realize is that we cannot go back to those ways and those days. Furthermore, for all our difficulties, life today is far better for more people and the possibilities for the future can be brighter than ever if we develop not only new knowledge, but a greater faith and confidence in the human mind and spirit.

For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of mind, literally inner landscapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films.

It is hard for the human soul not to love something, and our mind must of necessity be drawn to some kind of affection.

The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.

O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.

The status quo is more tenacious than anyone would ever imagine. The human mind prefers continuity rather than change. So it really has to be committed to eliminating a bad habit to even start down that path.

To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.

Generally speaking, anything that the human mind can conceive can ultimately be produced.

The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

The sensory ratios that are being reinforced by the new electronic technology are like the sensory ratios that were in place fifteen thousand years ago. . . . Print imposes a condition on human mind which is now lifting.

The magnetic force is animate, or imitates a soul; in many respects it surpasses the human soul while it is united to an organic body.

There is an unlucky tendency ... to allow every new invention to add to life's complications, and every new power to increase life's hustling; so that, unless we can dominate the mischief, we are really the worse off instead of the better.

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

Could we but rightly comprehend the mind of man, nothing would be impossible to us upon the earth.

When a coincidence seems amazing, that's because the human mind isn’t wired to naturally comprehend probability & statistics.

In this modern world of ours many people seem to think that science has somehow made such religious ideas as immortality untimely or old fashioned. I think science has a real surprise for the skeptics. Science, for instance, tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace. Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation. If God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of His universe, doesn't it make sense to assume that He applies it to the masterpiece of His creation, the human soul?

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.

One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.

The world is a living being - one nature, one soul. Keep that in mind.

Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.

To 'be loved' is the most basic of human needs. Like a flower, it waters the human soul. But 'to love' is a true blessing.