Geologist Quotes

Charles Lyell

Eduard Suess

James Dwight Dana

William Buckland

Roderick Murchison

Adam Sedgwick

John Wesley Powell

It was mistakenly reported that the Times correspondent Morrison had been killed during the Boxer Rebellion in Beijing, to which Morrison responded:

Have just read obituary in the Times. Kindly adjust pay to suit.

George Ernest Morrison

It is almost with a sense of shock that we realize that the essence of physics and chemistry alike lies in the arrangements within the atom.

Robert Charles Wallace

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

Peter John Wyllie

With the sole guidance of our practical knowledge of those physical agents which we see actually used in the continuous workings of nature, and of our knowledge of the respective effects induced by the same workings, we can with reasonable basis surmise what the forces were which acted even in the remotest times.

Giovanni Arduino

If we imagine an observer to approach our planet from outer space, and, pushing aside the belts of red-brown clouds which obscure our atmosphere, to gaze for a whole day on the surface of the earth as it rotates beneath him, the feature, beyond all others most likely to arrest his attention would be the wedge-like outlines of the continents as they narrow away to the South.

For geologists...the word 'plate' is in somewhat the same position as 'skyscraper' It is a dead (or almost dead) metaphor. Geologists know (or they think they know) what plates are, almost as well as the commuter knows what a skyscraper is.

David Roger Oldroyd

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

There were many examples in the history of life so show that precisely the most perfectly adapted, the physically biggest and strongest, the most numerous creatures, the lords of whole periods of life, died out in the end with monotonous regularity leaving the torch of life to be carried forward by smaller, more modest and often previously almost unnoticed forms of life, until they too fell into the trap of all too perfect adaptation.

Organized Fossils are to the naturalist as coins to the antiquary; they are the antiquities of the earth; and very distinctly show its gradual regular formation, with the various changes of inhabitants in the watery element.

William Smith (geologist)

In comparison with ourselves our world is large, its mountains and valleys are gigantic excrescences on its surface, whilst the elevations and depressions, representing continental elevations and ocean basins, form irregularities the magnitude of which we can only appreciate by the aid of figures.

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

I cannot promise to teach you all geology, I can only fire your imaginations.

I would rather have a mineral ill-classified and well-described, than well-classified and ill-described.

Abraham Gottlob Werner

Generally speaking, geologists seem to have been much more intent on making little worlds of their own, than in examining the crust of that which they inhabit. It would be much more desirable that facts should be placed in the foreground and theories in the distance, than that theories should be brought forward at the expense of facts.

Henry De la Beche

If the continents have moved, then they have drifted like rafts and formed the ocean floors in their wake. It is to this wake that we should look first.

John Tuzo Wilson

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.

If speaking to nonscientific audiences is something that interests you or will likely be asked of you, keep in mind three overriding requirements: first, you must be a human being, an interesting one if at all possible; second, you must be accurate in what you say, that is, tell the truth (about what is known and what isn't; about issues, debates, controversies); and third, if your subject is scientific knowledge, you must remain a scientist and not slip into the role of advocate or activist.

Scott L. Montgomery

Facts are the bricks of human experience, your implement in creation. Search for facts tirelessly, collect them in nature and in books, and read good textbooks from cover to cover.

Vladimir Obruchev

Everyone knows that the same animals and plants are not found everywhere... but that they are distributed so as to be gathered in distinct zoological and botanical provinces, of greater or less extent, according to their degree of limitation by physical conditions, whether features of the earth's outline, or climate.

Robert Alfred Cloyne Godwin-Austen

We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of this live.

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

The climate stubbornly refuses to co-operate with computer models and the writers of alarmist popular articles and books.

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

Crystallographic science does not consist in the scrupulous description of all the accidents of crystalline form, but in specifying, by the description of these forms, the more or less close relationship they have with each other.

Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l'Isle

It is perhaps a little indelicate to ask of our Mother Earth her age, but Science acknowledges no shame and from time to time has boldly attempted to wrest from her a secret which is proverbially well guarded.

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