“The scientist who considers himself absolutely "objective" and believes that he can free himself from the compulsion of the "merely" subjective should try — only in imagination of course — to kill in succession a lettuce, a fly, a frog, a guineapig, a cat, a dog, and finally a chimpanzee. He will then be aware how increasingly difficult murder becomes as the victim's level of organisation rises. The degree of inhibition against killing each one of these beings is a very precise measure for the considerably different values that we cannot help attributing to lower and higher forms of life. To any man who finds it equally easy to chop up a live dog and a live lettuce I would recommend suicide at his earliest convenience!”
Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility
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Konrad Lorenz 17
Austrian zoologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology… 1903–1989Related quotes

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 155.

Kein Mensch kann sich selbst je verstehen, denn dazu müßte er aus sich selbst herausgehen, dazu müßte das Subjekt des Erkennens und Wollens Objekt werden können: ganz wie, um das Universum zu verstehen, ein Standpunkt noch außerhalb des Universums erforderlich wäre.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), pp. 105-106.

“General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.”
"General, Your Tank Is a Powerful Vehicle", in "From a German War Primer", part of the Svendborg Poems (1939); as translated by Lee Baxandall in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 289
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 21
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 488.