Type Quotes
I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.
-Charles Darwin
The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.
-Albert Einstein
The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.
John Locke
Wherever the geological evidence is clear, it is in agreement with that derived from lead as an index of age. ….And, further it is to be hoped that by the careful study of igneous complexes, data will be collected from which it will be possible to graduate the geological column with and ever-increasingly accurate time scale.
-Arthur Holmes, 1911
at the age of 21 from his first paper
Establishing the rift valley and the mid-ocean ridge that went all the way around the
world for 40,000 miles—that was something important,” she wrote. “You could only do that once. You can’t find anything bigger than that, at least on this planet.
-Marie Tharp
Ocean in view! Oh! The Joy!
-William Clark
There is nothing personal in the thunderclap of understanding. The lightning that releases it comes from outside oneself.
-Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Most of these Mountains and Inland places whereon these kind of Petrify'd Bodies and Shells are found at present, or have been heretofore, were formerly under the Water, and that either by the descending of the Waters to another part of the Earth by the alteration of the Centre of Gravity of the whole bulk, or rather by the Eruption of some kind of Subterraneous Fires or Earthquakes, great quantities of Earth have been deserted by the Water and laid bare and dry.
-Robert Hooke
In the case of those solids, whether of earth, or rock, which enclose on all sides and contain crystals, selenites, marcasites, plants and their parts, bones and the shells of animals, and other bodies of this kind which are possessed of a smooth surface, these same bodies had already become hard at the time when the matter of the earth and rock containing them was still fluid. And not only did the earth and rock not produce the bodies contained in them, but they did not even exist as such when those bodies were produced in them.
-Nicolas Steno
...if an organized body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organized bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.
-James Hutton
Wherever the geological evidence is clear, it is in agreement with that derived from lead as an index of age. .... And, further, it is to be hoped that by this careful study of igneous complexes, data will be collected from which it will be possible to graduate the geological column with an ever-increasingly accurate time scale.
-Arthur Holmes
[It] is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.
-James Hutton
The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realized how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.
-Yuval Noah Harari