Geologist Quotes

To describe, without rising to the causes, or descending to the consequences, is no more science, than merely and simply to relate a fact of which one has been a witness.

Arnold Henry Guyot

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

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

Our first step towards the acquirement of scientific or exact knowledge, must be the unlearning of what we have before been led to regard as true.

John Wesley Judd

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

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.

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

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

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

In vein do we aspire to assign limits to the works of creation in space, whether we examine the starry heavens, or that world of minute animalcules which is revealed to us by the microscope. We are prepared, therefore, to find that in time also the confines of the universe lie beyond the reach of mortal ken.

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

The ice of Greenland is incessantly travelling both by land and sea, and is ever ready to meet the tourist and the explorer far down toward the middle of the Atlantic.

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

Foot-marks on stone! How plain and yet how strange! A bird track truly though of giant bulk, Yet of the monster every vestige else Has vanished. Bird, a problem thou hast solved Man never has: to leave his trace on earth To deep for time and fate to wear away.

Edward Hitchcock

The earth, from her deep foundations, unites with the celestial orbs that roll through boundless space.

William Buckland

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

Abraham Gottlob Werner

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

The laws of physics and chemistry must be the same in a crucible as in the larger laboratory of Nature.

I cannot see of what use these slides can be to a field man. I don't believe in looking at a mountain through a microscope.

Andrew Ramsay (geologist)

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

Even those who have more sympathy with man's endeavor than with the affairs of Nature may take an interest in the Science of Tectonics. Knowledge, after all, is of human creation; and, as a rule, the knowledge of the structure of a mountain chain comes as the reward of glorious struggle, both physical and mental.

Edward Battersby Bailey

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

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

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.

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