Geologically Quotes & Sayings

Because a lake is conceived as having only two primary dimensions, you can't swim inside the lake, though that would seem to make geometric sense. Lederer asks why we say that something can be underwater or underground even though it's surrounded by, not beneath, the water or the ground. It's because water and ground are conceived as 2-D surfaces, not 3-D volumes, geologically improbable though that is. The dimensionality of an object is also the aspect of its geometry that modifiers "see" when they combine with it in a phrase. A big CD, for example, has to have an above-average diameter, not an above-standard thickness (that could only be a thick CD), and a big lake has to be one with an unusually large area, regardless of its depth; it can't be a few yards wide and a mile deep. — Steven Pinker

The amazing exhibition of oil which has characterized the last twenty years, and will probably characterize the next ten or twenty years, is nevertheless, not only geologically but historically, a temporary and vanishing phenomenon ... — Peter Lesley

I grew up in the West, grew up on the land, was educated as a geologist. — Bruce Babbitt

The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving. — Peggy Noonan

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. — John Milton

The bridge was geologically ancient, an impassive observer, surrounded by life that was fleeting in comparison: trees that would only survive hundreds of years, tourists who would only live decades, insects that would thrive only for weeks. — Elizabeth Fama

re: the US agriculture industry: " This puts us in the odd position of consuming fossil fuels --geologically one of the rarest and most useful resources ever discovered-- to provide a substitute for dirt --the cheapest and most widely available agricultural input imaginable. — David R. Montgomery

In my worldview, there are filers, and there are pilers. Filers think alphabetically. Pilers think geologically. — Mary Doria Russell

Sentimentalism is the working off on yourself of feelings you haven't really got. — D.H. Lawrence

We should all live in central or southwest Queensland in Australia, which is geologically stable. Or Kansas or Nebraska, because it's relatively geologically stable. I am sure there is no emergency plan for Topeka. — Simon Winchester

Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact - that mystery of mysteries - the first appearance of new beings on this earth. — Charles Darwin

Not just personal unhappiness but all strife in life, including war, is the result of an over-emphasis on temporary things; money, power and material possession — Robert S. Jepson Jr.

There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition. — Jack Welch

W turned on his heel and began walking toward the door at the far wall. And by walking I mean, of course, not moving at all, at least not to the naked eye, because his strides could only be measured in micrometers. His creaky legs made barely the tiniest of forward steps, so he'd taken four strides before I noticed any lateral movement at all.
"I'll be right back."
"Geologically speaking, of course," HARV said. — John Zakour

In order to survive, an animal must be born into a favoring or at least tolerant environment. Similarly, in order to achieve preservation and recognition, a specimen of fossil man must be discovered in intelligence, attested by scientific knowledge, and interpreted by evolutionary experience. These rigorous prerequisites have undoubtedly caused many still-births in human palaeontology and are partly responsible for the high infant mortality of discoveries of geologically ancient man. — Earnest Hooton

Our tree's only source of energy is the sun: after light photons stimulate the pigments within the leaf, buzzing electrons line up into an unfathomably long chain and pass their excitement one to the other, moving biochemical energy across the cell to the exact location where it is needed. The plant pigment chlorophyll is a large molecule, and within the bowl of its spoon-shaped structure sits one single precious magnesium atom. The amount of magnesium needed for enough chlorophyll to fuel thirty-five pounds of leaves is equivalent to the amount of magnesium found in fourteen One A Day vitamins, and it must ultimately dissolve out of bedrock, which is a geologically slow process. — Hope Jahren

Although it is tempting to think of these natural landscapes as reflecting a stability in climactic and geologic forces, long periods of climactic and geophysical stability actually result in a rundown of the energy available to ecosystems and people. Geologically young regions with recent mountain building and volcanism tend to be much more biologically productive and have supported large populations of people despite their vulnerability to natural disasters. Geologically old regions (like most of Australia) tend to have low biological productivity and supported fewer people. — David Holmgren

The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and myself, is not, as so often misunderstood, a radical claim for truly sudden change, but a recognition that ordinary processes of speciation, properly conceived as glacially slow by the standard of our own life-span, do not resolve into geological time as long sequences of insensibly graded intermediates (the traditional, or gradualistic, view), but as geologically "sudden" origins at single bedding planes. — Stephen Jay Gould

At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time passes. Like the forming of Earth itself, volcanoes rise and spew lava. Oceans appear. Rock plates shift. Sea turtles swim half the ocean to lay eggs on the mother island; songbirds migrate over continents for berries from a tree. You evolve
cosmically and geologically. You lose each other and find each other again. Every day. Until love gathers the turtles and the birds of your world and encompasses them, too. — Michael Paterniti

Emerging from barbarism is a slow process and as man is , geologically speaking, still very young, he has his whole future before him. — Theodore Monod

And as anxious as he was to fulfill this vision, Pug knew that musings were rewarded after patient waiting because things always happen for a reason and not before the time is right. — Jackson Dunes