Fossils Quotes - Page 14

• It is my object, in the following work, to travel over ground which has as yet been little explored and to make my reader acquainted with a species of Remains, which, though absolutely necessary for understanding the history of the globe, have been hitherto almost uniformly neglected.

  Georges Cuvier

  Understanding, Littles, Neglected

  Georges Cuvier (Barón, (), Robert Jameson (1817). “Essay on the Theory of the Earth”, p.1

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• No conclusion is more fully established, than the important fact of the total absence of any vestiges of the human species throughout the entire series of geological formations.

  William Buckland

  Men, Important, Facts

  William Buckland (1837). “Geology and Mineralogy: Considered with Reference to Natural Theology”, p.103

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• Permanence of instinct must go with permanence of form...The history of the present must teach us the history of the past.

  Jean-Henri Fabre

  Past, Instinct, Form

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• The mineral kingdom consists of the fossil substances found in the earth. These are either entirely destitute of organic structure, or, having once possessed it, possess it no longer: such are the petrefactions.

  Torbern Bergman

  Substance, Earth, Kingdoms

  William Withering, Torbern Bergman (1822). “The miscellaneous tracts of the late William Withering: to which is prefixed a memoir of his life, character, and writings”, p.9

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• The question of the origin of life is essentially speculative. We have to construct, by straightforward thinking on the basis of very few factual observations, a plausible and self-consistent picture of a process which must have occurred before any of the forms which are known to us in the fossil record could have existed.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Thinking, Origin Of Life, Self

  John Desmond Bernal (1967). “The origin of life”

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• The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution i.e., a species becoming a new species accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.

  Steven M. Stanley

  Example, Transition, Records

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• Fossils work almost the same way as photography as a record of history. The accumulation of time and history becomes a negative of the image. And this negative comes off, and the fossil is the positive side. This is the same as the action of photography.

  Hiroshi Sugimoto

  Photography, Negative, Records

  "Tradition: Hiroshi Sugimoto". ART21 interview, art21.org.

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• Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labor efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things.

  Bill Mollison

  Stress, Thoughtful, Focus

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• In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.

  Jeff Goodell

  War, Moving, Reality

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• I personally think that a couple of pounds a week - maybe rising to almost £3 a week - is a reasonable price for Britain to achieve a degree of energy security to reduce its total dependence on fossil fuels and to honour its commitments to cut green house gases.

  Tim Yeo

  Couple, Commitment, Cutting

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• Japan is a model already to the lie that economic growth is the key to our future. If they can really show an alternative to nukes and fossil fuels, then they will be the poster boy for the renewable energy for the future.

  David Suzuki

  Lying, Boys, Keys

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• The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.

  James Hansen

  Facts, Climate, Burning Fossil Fuels

  "Global warming activist, former NASA scientist James Hansen speaks out before World Affairs Council of Oregon appearance". Interview with Scott Learn, www.oregonlive.com. April 24, 2013.

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• No matter how advanced our economy might be, no matter how sophisticated our equipment becomes, for the foreseeable future we will still depend on fossil fuels.

  George W. Bush

  Alternatives, Fuel, Might

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• [The Center for Industrial Progress'] model allows us to keep conflicts of interest to an absolute minimum as we do our research and writing. As for our relationship with the fossil fuel industry, it's the same as everyone else - they pay for our ideas, we never accept money to voice theirs.

  Alex Epstein

  Writing, Ideas, Voice

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• I am not a global warming sceptic. I accept that rising human-caused CO2 from fossil sources could 'change the climate'. The basic physics is there to support this view. But where is the evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging?

  Chris de Freitas

  Views, Support, Climate

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• Society's dependence on fossil fuels is jeopardising social and economic progress.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Progress, Fuel, Economic

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• Dinosaur fossils were placed in rocks by prankster God just to make human beings think the world is older than it is.

  Bill Hicks

  Thinking, Rocks, World

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• The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs,' like the health effects of air and water pollution.

  Jeff Goodell

  Air, Water, Cost

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• I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil.

  James A. Garfield

  Fall, Feelings, Progress

  "Garfield's Words: Suggestive Passages from the Public and Private Writings of James Abram Garfield". Book by James Abram Garfield, 1882.

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• Established species are evolving so slowly that major transitions between genera and higher taxa must be occurring within small rapidly evolving populations that leave NO LEGIBLE FOSSIL RECORD.

  Steven M. Stanley

  Transition, Population, Records

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• An oil crisis looms, prices are spiking - and our president is extolling algae. After Solyndra, Keystone and promises of seaweed in their gas tanks, Americans sense a president so ideologically antipathetic to fossil fuels - which we possess in staggering abundance - that he is utterly unserious about the real world of oil in which the rest of us live.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Real, Oil, Promise

  "Obama's oil flimflam". jewishworldreview.com. March 15, 2012.

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• We must proceed with our own energy development. Exploitation of domestic petroleum and natural gas potentialities, along with nuclear, solar, geothermal, and non-fossil fuels is vital. We will never again permit any foreign nation to have Uncle Sam over a barrel of oil.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Uncles, Oil, Energy

  Gerald R. Ford's speech as Vice President to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in West Palm Beach, Florida, January 26, 1974.

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• Fossil fuel is very seductive stuff. [John Maynard] Keynes once said that, as far as he could tell, the average standard of living from the beginning of human history to the middle of the eighteenth century had perhaps doubled. Not much had changed, and then we found coal and gas and oil and everything changed. We're reaping the result of that, both ecologically and socially.

  Bill McKibben

  Average, Oil, Seductive

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• In the United States, cheap fossil fuel has eroded communities. We're the first people with no real practical need for each other. Everything comes from a great distance through anonymous and invisible transactions. We've taken that to be a virtue, but it's as much a curse. Americans are not very satisfied with their lives, and the loss of community is part of that.

  Bill McKibben

  Real, Distance, Taken

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• I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women.

  Hyman Rickover

  Teacher, Responsibility, Men

  "Energy Resources and Our Future". Remarks at a Banquet of the Annual Scientific Assembly of the Minnesota State Medical Association, www.resilience.org. May 14, 1957.

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