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Foldings of the earth's crust, low hills, extensive plains, mountain-chains and narrow valleys, broad table-lands and wide valleys, local chimneys or volcanoes, river-beds, lake-basins, inland seas,—such are some of the phenomena which, disconnected as they seem at first glance, have nevertheless been brought under certain principles, and explained according to definite physical laws.

— Louis Agassiz Geological Sketches (1870)

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More quotes by Louis Agassiz

The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.

Geological Sketches (1870)

The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world.

Methods of Study in Natural History (1863)

Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.

A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991)

The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs.

Geological Sketches (1870)

A laboratory of natural history is a sanctuary where nothing profane should be tolerated. I feel less agony at improprieties in churches than in a scientific laboratory.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Louis Agassiz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.