American Geologist Quotes

James Dwight Dana

John Wesley Powell

Grove Karl Gilbert

Clarence King

Harry Hammond Hess

Frank Wigglesworth Clarke

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin

The technicalities of science, so bewildering to the layman, are merely aids to exactness, avoidances of circumlocution - in short, they are practical devices whereby labor is saved.

Frank Wigglesworth Clarke

For unless human nature has changed considerable through the ages, what is considered news, and therefore may be remembered when the normal events of daily life are long forgotten, is the unusual, particularly the violently unusual. And what is more violently unusual than a natural catastrophe?

Dorothy B. Vitaliano

The results of experimental petrology... help to distinguish between possible and impossible processes.

Peter John Wyllie

The sureness of the geologist's judgment depends not only on the validity of his theoretical concepts and the soundness of his reasoning , but largely on how much of the earth he has seen and understood.

The prime object of the geologist as a scientist is to find the truth. The prime object of the geologist as a practitioner is to find ore.

Waldemar Lindgren

A hypothesis to gain scientific credence must emerge successful from the test of observed facts and mathematical theory.

The difference between bad observation and good observation is that the former is erroneous; the latter is incomplete.

Charles R. Van Hise

Mountains rise and disappear; sea and land repeatedly change places. Majestic forces in orderly succession perform their work, and development, whose course we may follow and whose processes understand, is made clear before our eyes.

James Furman Kemp

The strata of the earth reveal its history with great fidelity for long periods previous to the present, but earlier than that the record becomes indistinct, and if we attempt to follow it back to the beginning, the indistinctness merges into extreme obscurity.

Rollin D. Salisbury

Science is not sacrificing any of its strength nor compromising its ideals. It is technology that is changing - that is becoming less empirical, more systematic, more quantitative, more scientific.

Charles S. Slichter

The expanding horizon of knowledge has simply lengthened the line of contact between man and the unknown elements in the cosmos.

Kirtley F. Mather

Narrow and loose habits of thought, prejudiced attitudes towards evidence, bias from previous opinions and feelings, shallowness and superficiality in observation, and carelessness in reasoning are appropriate subjects of moral reproof.

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin

It seems that in our hunt for general principles we feel the need of tagging each observed fact with some word that may connect it with the language in which the great fundamental laws of the universe are proclaimed at the seats of learning.

George Otis Smith

The scrutinizing eye of science penetrates with far-reaching sight the system of things about us, and in the dim limits of vision reads everywhere the word mystery.

James Dwight Dana

I shall consider this paper an essay in geopoetry. In order not to travel any further into the realm of fantasy than is absolutely necessary I shall hold as closely as possibly to a uniformitarian approach; even so, at least one great catastrophe will be required early in the Earth's history.

Harry Hammond Hess

The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse.

John Wesley Powell

Once a continent, always a continent; once an ocean, always an ocean.

In the domain of the world's knowledge there is no infallibility.

Grove Karl Gilbert

Experience has shown that whenever a new and more advanced viewpoint has been gained to take the place of an earlier one, and its superiority has come to be acknowledged, the tendency has always been to sketch in from that one standpoint even the more distant objects, rather than to move forward to new and independent positions.

William Herbert Hobbs

Dinosaurs are a touchstone that separates the mentality of children from that of adults.

The western margin of this continent [North America] is built of a succession of mountain chains folded in broad corrugations, like waves of stone upon whose seaward base beat the mild, small breakers of the Pacific.

There is ample evidence of suspicion, due to ignorance, directing the thoughts of American people when they consider the actions of peoples in other lands.

Wallace Walter Atwood

In a sense, the fossil fuels are a onetime gift that lifted us up from subsistence agriculture and eventually should lead us to a future based on renewable resources.

Kenneth S. Deffeyes

The objectivity of the IPCC documents is laudable. But the fact that the group recognizes its model weaknesses and is trying to improve them doesn't make its conclusions stronger or more believable. (page 83).

Orrin H. Pilkey

Science is not a form of black magic. A thousand blind alleys must often be explored before a right road is found; a thousand amateurs must have their fling before a Darwin or an Einstein comes along.

Laurence McKinley Gould