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

  52 Copy quote

• 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”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  "The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Robert T. Bakker

  Kids, Adults, Dinosaurs

  9 Copy quote

• 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). “The Natural History of the European Seas...”, p.10

  86 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself - Climate is beyond our power to control...Earth doesn't care about governments or their legislation. You can't find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.

  Robert B. Laughlin

  Government, Heal Itself, Weather

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  46 Copy quote

• 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. Interest in the land and concern about how we are polluting the air and water of the planet are what make me want to travel back in geologic time-to witness the shaping of the earth before man.

  Maya Lin

  Cutting, Men, Land

  Quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, Aug. 1996

  11 Copy quote

  Show source