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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.

— Louis Agassiz A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991)

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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)

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.

But whatever its defects, the classification of Linnæus was the first attempt at grouping animals together according to certain common structural characters.

Methods of Study in Natural History (1863)

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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.