Geologist Quotes

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

We should greatly err, if we endeavoured to force all ancient nature into a close comparison with existing operations.

Roderick Murchison

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

William Buckland

Experimental geology has this in common with all other branches of our science, petrology and palaeontology included, that in the long run it withers indoors.

The geologist, ascending from the oldest and lowest portions of the earth's crust, and dealing for millions of years with physical forces and the instinctive powers of animals alone, at length as he approaches the surface finds himself in contact with an entirely new agency, the free-will and conscious action of man.

John William Dawson

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

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

The older fossils, therefore, like the mummies of Egypt, can be described well nigh as minutely as the existences of the present creation: the newer, like the comparatively modern remains of our churchyards, exist, except in a few rare cases, as mere fragments...

In these hurried days, geologists will take no harm from a quiet contemplation of the history of even this small part of their science.

Herbert Harold Read

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

I became a geologist forever by seeing with my own eyes: THE EARTH IS ALIVE.

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

Grove Karl Gilbert

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