Geologist

Charles Darwin

Science

1758–1778

"Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, … I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification."

"Landscapes are about beauty and death. The only way you can define beauty.. ..is to know that death is hiding behind it. This is what haunts you when you’re doing a so-called landscape painting."

🇺🇸Henry Fairfield Osborn

Science

1857–1935

"This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin. He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth."

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff

Science

1852–1911

"A famous name has this peculiarity that it becomes gradually smaller especially in natural sciences where each succeeding discovery invariably overshadows what precedes."

🇺🇸Charles R. Van Hise

Science

1857–1918

"I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every family of the state."

Cargill Gilston Knott

Mathematics

1856–1922

"What may appear as a towering peak to one may seem but an ordinary eminence to another."

🇬🇧Gideon Mantell

Science

1790–1852

"Upon fixing my residence at Lewes, I resolved to devote my leisure moments to the investigation of the "Organic remains of a former world"..."

🇺🇸Claudia Alexander

Science

1959–2015

"There's a deep thirst and hunger to know more about space, literally because of the Star Trek phenomenon."

Miho Mosulishvili

Literature

post-postmodernism

b. 1962

"As it seems to me, skill of the writer in abilities not only to write, but will delete everything that is unessential."

🇬🇧William Buckland

Science

1784–1856

"I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king."

🇫🇷Georges Cuvier

Science

1769–1832

"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."

🇸🇪Carl Linnaeus

Science

1707–1778

"The principle being accepted that all Species of one Genus have arisen from one mother through different fathers, it must be assumed"

"Writing should generate ideas into matter, and not the other way around."

🇺🇸John Muir (indologist)

Philosophy

environmentalism

1838–1914

"“Only that man... who is deluded, who is desirous of acquiring profits, who has neither deliberated upon his own religion, nor looked at the defects in Christianity, would become a Christian."

"Scientists are not known for the graces of courtesy and tact when commenting on the work of others."

🇺🇸James Dwight Dana

Science

1813–1895

"The grand old Book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more it will sustain and illustrate the Sacred word."

"The Sheltering Desert by Henno Martin on archive.org"

🇩🇪Gottfried Leibniz

Mathematics

rationalism

1646–1716

"G. W. Leibniz Texts and Translations, Donald Rutherford, U California, San Diego"

John Muir

Philosophy

environmentalism

1838–1914

"Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter."

🇬🇧Douglas Mawson

Science

1882–1958

"If we ignore the facts contained in one part of the world, surely we are hampering scientific advance."

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

Science

1904–1983

"The subjective element in geological studies accounts for two characteristic types that can be distinguished among geologists. One considering geology as a creative art, the other regarding geology as an exact science."

🇫🇷Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Religion

1881–1955

"Science will, in all probability, be increasingly impregnated by mysticism."

🇺🇸Louis Agassiz

Science

1807–1873

"The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs."

"The professor was lost in thought. He was disturbed and worried, but proud that he was behaving like a true scientist: he wasn’t losing his head, or panicking, or believing in miracles."

🇩🇪Alexander von Humboldt

Philosophy

1767–1835

"Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things."

🇺🇸Lydia Maria Child

Social Activism

1802–1880

"Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kind, sunshiny old age."

🇺🇸Clair Cameron Patterson

Science

1922–1995

"...as I grew up, we spent a lot of time learning things about the world that most youngsters in cities don’t learn these days."

"There were no CO2 emitting industries in the Medieval Warming. This natural warming event was greater than the Late 20th Century Warming, which we are told is due to human emissions of CO2."

🇫🇷Tzvetan Todorov

Literature

1939–2017

"American society has always exercised a stronger pressure on individual behavior than Western European societies; but in time of war this pressure is notched a few degrees, and starts to become quite alarming."

🇺🇸Orrin H. Pilkey

Science

1934–2024

"If a model itself is “a poor representation of reality,” they write, “determining the sensitivity of an individual parameter in the model is a meaningless pursuit."