Geologic Time Quotes

• Experiments in geology are far more difficult than in physics and chemistry because of the greater size of the objects, commonly outside our laboratories, up to the earth itself, and also because of the fact that the geologic time scale exceeds the human time scale by a million and more times. This difference in time allows only direct observations of the actual geologic processes, the mind having to imagine what could possibly have happened in the past.

  Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

  Science, Past, Differences

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• The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all. ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape.

  John Burroughs

  Lying, Science, Rocks

  John Burroughs (1924). “Under the apple trees”

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• For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

  Richard Dawkins

  Cells, Bacteria, Firsts

  "La conferencia de Richard Dimbleby: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Conferencia, BBC1 Television, 12 de noviembre de 1996.

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• Dinosaurs are the best way to teach kids, and adults, the immensity of geologic time.

  Robert T. Bakker

  Kids, Adults, Dinosaurs

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• Palaeontological research exhibits, beyond question, the phenomenon of provinces in time, as well as provinces in space. Moreover, all our knowledge of organic remains teaches us, that species have a definite existence, and a centralization in geological time as well as in geographical space, and that no species is repeated in time.

  Edward Forbes

  Ocean, Space, Research

  Edward Forbes (1859). "La historia natural de los mares europeos...", p.10

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• I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode.

  Maya Lin

  Cutting, Memorial, Vietnam

  Quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, Aug. 1996

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• One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.

  Robert Morgan

  Powerful, Choices, Unexpected

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• Por favor, mantengan la calma: La Tierra se curará sola - El clima está más allá de nuestro poder de control... A la Tierra no le importan los gobiernos ni su legislación. No se puede encontrar mucho calentamiento global real en las observaciones meteorológicas actuales. El cambio climático es una cuestión de tiempo geológico, algo que la Tierra hace rutinariamente por sí misma sin pedir permiso a nadie ni dar explicaciones.

  Robert B. Laughlin

  Gobierno, Curarse, Tiempo

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• The conquest of the outskirts of the atmosphere, and eventually space, is a revolutionary event, comparable only to the transition of the aquatic animals to the land in geologic times.

  Hubertus Strughold

  Animal, Space, Land

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• To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. At Devil’s Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds, you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you. You become one with a spirit that pervades geologic time and space.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Space, Forever, Devil

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• Vi el Monumento a los Veteranos de Vietnam no como un objeto colocado en la tierra, sino como un corte en la tierra que luego ha sido pulido, como una geoda. El interés por la tierra y la preocupación por cómo estamos contaminando el aire y el agua del planeta es lo que me hace querer viajar atrás en el tiempo geológico, para ser testigo de la formación de la tierra antes del hombre.

  Maya Lin

  Cutting, Men, Land

  Quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, Aug. 1996

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