GH Judgment, Balancing, and Objectivity
Geoscience
Type Quotes
Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and in constructing the useful combinations which are in the infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to choose.
-Jules Henri Poincare
But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
-Thomas Paine
According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead.
-Charles Francis Richter
Creativity comes from minds full of concepts, full of carefully observed facts.
-John M. Parker
Every geologist knows that information sufficient to solve any sizable geologic problem is seldom, if ever, available. There are gaps between the geologic facts that can be spanned only by the imagination. Failure to bridge these gaps means failure to draw conclusions of a tentative nature. These tentative conclusions, or geologic ideas, grease the gears of the exploratory machine.... to bridge the gaps between geologic data by leaps of an imagination under control is to be resourceful. Controlled imagination is not guesswork. It is imagination tempered by experience, knowledge and sound reasoning. Like a muscle it grows through exercise.
-I. H. Cram
You know, earthquakes, they are like weather, and we aren't afraid of the rain. We make good roofs, good gutters and good drains. Similarly, we know how to build buildings that don't fall down in earthquakes. The truth is frame buildings don't fall down. Their chimneys do, sometimes. Actually, buying a house in an earthquake zone is much less scary than buying a house on a beach cliff. Now, people who do that are crazy!
-Tanya Atwater
It is the nature of men having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.
-Sir Walter Raleigh
We are like a judge confronted by a defendant who declines to answer, and we must determine the truth from the circumstantial evidence.
-Alfred Wegener
Much has been spoken and written to demonstrate that the revelation of the rocks is or is not in conflict with the revelations of the Bible. To me the whole discussion has the ring of blasphemy. Let science go on enlightening our minds and let Christianity go on making glorious the paths of men. There is room and great need for both. Walking between the two, with a hand on the shoulder of either, let poesy gather the bird-songs and perfumes of all the woods and fields from the beginning to the end of time.
-Maurice Thompson, Byways and Bird Notes
Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors that they are ready to repeat their lessons as often as we please.
-Robert Chambers
