Henry Fairfield Osborn Quotes & Sayings

Tyrannosaurus is the most superb carnivorous mechanism among the terrestrial Vertebrata, in which raptorial power and speed are combined. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

The all-round liberally educated man, from Palaeolithic times to the time when the earth shall become a cold cinder, will always be the same, namely, the man who follows his standards of truth and beauty, who employs his learning and observation, his reason, his expression, for purposes of production, that is, to add something of his own to the stock of the world's ideas. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

Quite recently the human descent theory has been stigmatized as the 'gorilla theory of human ancestry.' All this despite the fact that Darwin himself, in the days when not a single bit of evidence regarding the fossil ancestors of man was recognized, distinctly stated that none of the known anthropoid apes, much less any of the known monkeys, should be considered in any way as ancestral to the human stock. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

I am perhaps more proud of having helped to redeem the character of the cave-man than of any other single achievement of mine in the field of anthropology. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

Today the earth speaks with resonance and clearness and every ear in every civilized country of the world is attuned to its wonderful message of the creative evolution of man, except the ear of William Jennings Bryan; he alone remains stone-deaf, he alone by his own resounding voice drowns the eternal speech of nature. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

No existing form of anthropoid ape is even remotely related to the stock which has given rise to man. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

The evolution of higher and of lower forms of life is as well and as soundly established as the eternal hills. It has long since ceased to be a theory; it is a law of Nature as universal in living things as is the law of gravitation in material things and in the motions of the heavenly spheres. — Henry Fairfield Osborn