Geoscience Quotes

“A million years is a short time - the shortest worth messing with for most problems. You begin tuning your mind to a time scale that is the planet's time scale. For me, it is almost unconscious now and is a kind of companionship with the earth.”
― John McPhee, Basin and Range

“But for geologists quarries are wonderful places, allowing us to see down through the trees and pastures that may be pleasing to the eye but obscure the profound stories that rocks have to tell. In a quarry we are privileged to look into the heart of the mountains and open up the record of the Earth's past. For me, finding a new quarry can be an emotional experience akin to entering the granite portal of the university library at Berkeley. In a library and in a quarry we confront the archives of history.”
― Walter Álvarez, The Mountains of Saint Francis : Discovering the Geologic Events that Shaped our Earth