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Direct observation of the testimony of the earth ... is a matter of the laboratory, of the field naturalist, of indefatigable digging among the ancient archives of the earth's history.

— Henry Fairfield Osborn

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Source: "Evolution and Religion", The New York Times (5 March 1922), p. 91; written in response to an article a few days earlier in which William Jennings Bryan challenged the theory of evolution as lacking proof.
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More by 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.

The Earth Speaks to Bryan (1925)

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More quotes by Henry Fairfield Osborn

We have to be reminded over and over again that Nature is full of paradoxes.

The Evolution Deceit : The Scientific Collapse of Darwinism (2001)

Every breath you draw, every accelerated beat of your heart in the emotional periods of your oratory depend upon highly elaborated physical and chemical reactions and mechanisms which nature has been building up through a million centuries.

This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin. He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth.

Evolution and Religion in Education (1926)

The Earth Speaks, clearly, distinctly, and, in many of the realms of Nature, loudly, to William Jennings Bryan, but he fails to hear a single sound.

The Earth Speaks to Bryan (1925)

But the voice of anatomy, like the voice of all nature, never reaches the mental ear of the Great Commoner. It is the novel province of anatomy to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the structure, the origin and the history of man.

Evolution and Religion in Education : Polemics of the Fundamentalist (1926)

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