Alfred Wegener Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

It is a strange fact, characteristic of the incomplete state of our present knowledge, that totally opposing conclusions are drawn about prehistoric conditions on our planet, depending on whether the problem is approached from the biological or the geophysical viewpoint.

Alfred Wegener
We are like a judge confronted by a defendant who declines to answer, and we must determine the truth from the circumstantial evidence.

Alfred Wegener
The Newton of drift theory has not yet appeared. His absence need cause no anxiety; the theory is still young and still often treated with suspicion. In the long run, one cannot blame a theoretician for hesitating to spend time and trouble on explaining a law about whose validity no unanimity prevails.

Alfred Wegener
South America must have lain alongside Africa and formed a unified block which was split in two in the Cretaceous; the two parts must then have become increasingly separated over a period of millions of years like pieces of a cracked ice floe in water.

Alfred Wegener
The forces which displace continents are the same as those which produce great fold-mountain ranges. Continental drift, faults and compressions, earthquakes, volcanicity, transgression cycles and polar wandering are undoubtedly connected causally on a grand scale. Their common intensification in certain periods of the earth's history shows this to be true. However, what is cause and what effect, only the future will unveil.

Alfred Wegener
We shall refrain here from citing the literature in support of our statements. The obvious needs no backing by outside opinion, and the willfully blind cannot be helped by any means. As far as we are concerned, it is not now a question of whether the continental blocks have moved; doubt is no longer possible.

Alfred Wegener
The first concept of continental drift first came to me as far back as 1910, when considering the map of the world, under the direct impression produced by the congruence of the coastlines on either side of the Atlantic. At first I did not pay attention to the idea because I regarded it as improbable.

Alfred Wegener