Roderick Murchison quotes

“Placed as the fossils are in their several tiers of burial-places the one over the other; we have in them true witnesses of successive existences, whilst the historian of man is constantly at fault as to dates and even the sequence of events, to say nothing of the contradicting statements which he is forced to reconcile.”
-- Roderick Murchison

#Science Quotes #Men Quotes #Events Quotes

“Physical geography and geology are inseparable scientific twins.”
-- Roderick Murchison

Source : "The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society: JRGS", Volume 27, p. cxxxvii, 1857.

#Science Quotes #Twins Quotes #Geography Quotes

“During cycles long anterior to the creation of the human race, and while the surface of the globe was passing from one condition to another, whole races of animals-each group adapted to the physical conditions in which they lived-were successively created and exterminated.”
-- Roderick Murchison

Source : Roderick Impey Murchison (1854). “Siluria the History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold Over the Earth by Roderick Impey Murchison”, p.5

#Science Quotes #Animal Quotes #Race Quotes

“We should greatly err, if we endeavoured to force all ancient nature into a close comparison with existing operations.”
-- Roderick Murchison

Source : Roderick Impey Murchison (1854). “Siluria: the history of the oldest known rocks containing organic remains”, p.481

#Nature Quotes #Science Quotes #Errors Quotes

“The earliest signs of living things, announcing as they do a high complexity of organization, entirely exclude the hypothesis of a transmutation from lower to higher grades of being. The first fiat of Creation which went forth, doubtlessly ensured the perfect adaptation of animals to the surrounding media; and thus, whilst the geologist recognizes a beginning, he can see in the innumerable facts of the eye of the earliest crustacean, the same evidences of Omniscience as in the completion of the vertebrate form.”
-- Roderick Murchison

Source : Roderick Impey Murchison (1854). “Siluria the History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold Over the Earth by Roderick Impey Murchison”, p.469

#Eye Quotes #Science Quotes #Animal Quotes

“Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.”
-- Roderick Murchison

Source : Roderick Impey Murchison (1839). “The silurian system, founded on geological researches in the counties of Salop, Hereford etc”, p.574

#Nature Quotes #Mean Quotes #Science Quotes

“The order of ... successive generations is indeed much more clearly proved than many a legend which has assumed the character of history in the hands of man; for the geological record is the work of God.”
-- Roderick Murchison

#Character Quotes #Science Quotes #Men Quotes

“We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.”

“But it would be absolutely mistaken to regard a wealth of theoretical knowledge as characteristic proof for the qualities and abilities of a leader.”

“There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.”

“Is it a particularly British trait to so utterly adore truly appalling men, from Tony Hancock through to Steptoe and Alf Garnett, Captain Mainwaring, Rigsby, Del Boy, Victor Meldrew and on to David Brent from The Office. The most deeply adored characters are all simply vile.”

“God never can use any man very much till he has grace enough to forget himself entirely while doing God's work; for He will not give His glory to another nor share with the most valued instrument the praise that belongs to Jesus Christ alone.”

“A devotee should be fixed in the conclusion that, the spiritual master cannot be subject to criticism and should never be considered equal to a common man.”

“Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.”

Source : More Poems (1936) no. 36

“History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.”

“And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.”

Source : Adam Hochschild (2011). “King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa”, p.356, Pan Macmillan

“In any event, colonization and the grant of lands were provincial matters.”

Source : Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. (1909). “Epochs of American History”