Mortimer Wheeler quotes

Mortimer Wheeler quotes

last updated: November 28, 2023

“Archaeology is not a science, it's a vendetta.”
-- Mortimer Wheeler

#Science Quotes #Vendetta Quotes #Archaeology Quotes
“In a simple direct sense, archaeology is a science that must be lived, must be "seasoned with humanity." Dead archaeology is the driest dust that blows.”
-- Mortimer Wheeler

#Blow Quotes #Simple Quotes #Dust Quotes

“If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.”

Source : A.A. Gill (2008). “Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There”, p.80, Simon and Schuster
“I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.”
“[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review from cover to cover.”
“But it would be absolutely mistaken to regard a wealth of theoretical knowledge as characteristic proof for the qualities and abilities of a leader.”
“A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth.”
“Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life.”
“Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.”
“I always was going to be a writer. The other jobs were just to keep me in food. Though I enjoyed the archaeology.”
“The limitations of archaeology are galling. It collects phenomena, but hardly ever can isolate them so as to interpret scientifically; it can frame any number of hypotheses, but rarely, if ever, scientifically prove.”
“We must learn, and we are gradually learning, how to write history with the help of archaeology.”

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