Georges Cuvier Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.

Georges Cuvier
All organs of an animal form a single system, the parts of which hang together, and act and re-act upon one another; and no modifications can appear in one part without bringing about corresponding modifications in all the rest.

Georges Cuvier
If it be so interesting to us to follow, in the infancy of our species, the almost obliterated traces of extinct nations, why should it not also be so, to search, amid the darkness of the infancy of the Earth, for the traces of revolutions which have taken place anterior to the existence of all nations?

Georges Cuvier
The time is past for ignorance to assert that these remains of organized bodies are mere lusus naturae, — productions generated in the womb of the earth by its own creative powers.

Georges Cuvier
The observer listens to nature; the experimenter questions and forces her to unveil herself.

Georges Cuvier
Thus, commencing our investigation by a careful survey of anyone bone by itself, a person who is sufficiently master of the laws of organic structure, may, as it were, reconstruct the whole animal to which that bone had belonged.

Georges Cuvier
The immutability of species is a necessary condition of the existence of scientific natural history.

Georges Cuvier
All those individual animals and plants belong to one species which can be proved to be either descended from one another, or from common ancestors, or which are as similar to these as the latter are among themselves.

Georges Cuvier
All parts of a living body are interrelated; they can act only in so far as they act together; trying to separate one from the whole means transferring it to the realm of dead substances; it means entirely changing its essence.

Georges Cuvier
Secondly, the nature of the revolutions which have altered the surface of the earth must have had a more decisive effect on the terrestrial quadrupeds than on the marine animals.

Georges Cuvier
In spite of what moralists say, the animals are scarcely less wicked or less unhappy than we are ourselves. The arrogance of the strong, the servility of the weak, low rapacity, ephemeral pleasure purchased by great effort, death preceded by long suffering, all belong to the animals as they do to men.

Georges Cuvier
Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by a few observations, to ascertain the history of this world, and the series of events which preceded the birth of the human race?

Georges Cuvier
At the sight of a single bone, of a single piece of bone, I recognize and reconstruct the portion of the whole from which it would have been taken. The whole being to which this fragment belonged appears in my mind's eye.

Georges Cuvier
It is my object, in the following work, to travel over ground which has as yet been little explored and to make my reader acquainted with a species of Remains, which, though absolutely necessary for understanding the history of the globe, have been hitherto almost uniformly neglected.

Georges Cuvier
It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them.

Georges Cuvier
To spread healthy ideas among even the lowest classes of people, to remove men from the influence of prejudice and passion, to make reason the arbiter and supreme guide of public opinion; that is the essential goal of the sciences; that is how science will contribute to the advancement of civilization, and that is what deserves protection of governments who want to insure the stability of their power.

Georges Cuvier
The works which this man leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent.

Georges Cuvier