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

topic: Past, Differences, Mind, Geologic Time

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

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

topic: Lying, Science, Rocks, Geologic Time

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

topic: Cells, Half, Bacteria, Colony, Geologic Time

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

- Robert T. Bakker

topic: Kids, Dinosaurs, Way, Geologic Time

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

source: Edward Forbes (1859). “The Natural History of the European Seas...”, p.10

topic: Ocean, Space, Research, Exhibits, Centralization

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

source: Quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, Aug. 1996

topic: Cutting, Men, Air, Vietnam Veteran, Air And Water

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

topic: Powerful, Choices, Unexpected, Word Choice, Geologic Time

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

topic: Government, Weather, Doe, Heal Itself, Geologic Time

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

topic: Animal, Land, Medicine, Space Medicine, Geologic Time

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

topic: Space, Forever, Devil, Sacred Places, Geologic Time