Agassiz Quotes

I may say that here, as in most cases where the operations of nature interfere with the designs of man, it is not by a direct intervention on our part that we may remedy the difficulties, but rather by a precise knowledge of their causes, which may enable us, if not to check, at least to avoid the evil consequences. ~ Louis Agassiz

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Mass., before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general. ~ Louis Agassiz

The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts, to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge. ~ Louis Agassiz

The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive the light, there must have been light to enter it. ~ Louis Agassiz

The possibilities of existence run so deeply into the extravagant that there is scarcely any conception too extraordinary for Nature to realise. ~ Louis Agassiz

Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk out without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each one hold a specimen and examine it as you talk. ~ Louis Agassiz

It is the job of prophets and scientists alike to proclaim the glories of God. ~ Louis Agassiz

Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of Origin of Species. He says it is POOR-VERY POOR!!. The fact is, he is very much annoyed by it. ~ Asa Gray

You cannot do without one specialty. You must have some base-line to measure the work and attainments of others. For a general view of the subject, study the history of the sciences. Broad knowledge of all Nature has been the possession of no naturalist except Humboldt, and general relations constituted his specialty. ~ Louis Agassiz

This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.
[It had formerly been held that there were no genetic connections among species.] ~ Asa Gray

I hail with joy- for I am a temperance man and a friend of temperance-I hail with joy the efforts that are being made to raise wine in the country. I believe that when you have everywhere cheap, pure, unadulterated wine, you will no longer have need for either prohibitory or license laws. ~ Louis Agassiz

The study of Nature is intercourse with the Highest Mind. You should never trifle with Nature. ~ Louis Agassiz

I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz, that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before. ~ Charles Lyell

The resources of the Deity cannot be so meagre, that, in order to create a human being endowed with reason, he must change a monkey into a man. ~ Louis Agassiz

It is pleasant to notice that the harmony between the naturalists and officers of the "Blake" was not for an instant disturbed during the time they were working in common. Everything in the way of naval routine was sacrificed for the time to the objects of the cruise, and the appearance of the deck and bow of the Blake was often more that of a mud-scow than of a vessel in the service of the United States. ~ Alexander Agassiz

I cannot afford to waste my time making money. ~ Louis Agassiz

The theory [of evolution] is a scientific mistake. ~ Louis Agassiz

The surface of the earth is not simply a stage on which the thousands of present and past inhabitants played their parts in turn. There are much more intimate relations between the earth and the living organisms which populated it, and it may even be demonstrated that the earth was developed because of them. ~ Louis Agassiz

My familiarity with the successful use of very long steel ropes for mining purposes naturally suggested their adaptation to the new purpose of deep sea work. ~ Alexander Agassiz

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

A great number of soundings, mainly along the continental slope of the New England States were also taken by the vessels of the United States Fish Commission. Important soundings were made by the United States Fish Commission steamer ALBATROSS in the Caribbean, during the winter of 1883-1884. ~ Alexander Agassiz

In Europe I have been accused of taking my scientific ideas from the Church. In America I have been called a heretic, because I will not let my church-going friends pat me on the head. ~ Louis Agassiz

As long as men inquire, they will find opportunities to know more upon these topics than those who have gone before them, so inexhaustibly rich is nature in the innermost diversity of her treasures of beauty, order and intelligence. ~ Louis Agassiz

The office of science is not to record possibilities; but to ascertain what nature does ... As far as Darwinism deals with mere arguments of possibilities or even probabilities, without a basis of fact, it departs from the true scientific method and injures science, as most of the devotees of the new ism have already done. ~ Louis Agassiz

In-depth studies have an influence on general ideas, whereas theories, in turn, in order to maintain themselves, push their spectators to search for new evidence. The mind's activity that is maintained by the debates about these works, is probably the source of the greatest joys given to man to experience on Earth. ~ Louis Agassiz

Branches or types are characterized by the plan of their structure,
Classes, by the manner in which that plan is executed, as far as ways and means are concerned,
Orders, by the degrees of complication of that structure,
Families, by their form, as far as determined by structure,
Genera, by the details of the execution in special parts, and
Species, by the relations of individuals to one another and to the world in which they live, as well as by the proportions of their parts, their ornamentation, etc. ~ Louis Agassiz

Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he had no time to make money. ~ Orison Swett Marden

America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the Far West. ~ Louis Agassiz

The world is the geologist's great puzzle-box; he stands before it like the child to whom the separate pieces of his puzzle remain a mystery till he detects their relation and sees where they fit, and then his fragments grow at once into a connected picture beneath his hand. ~ Louis Agassiz

One naturally asks, what was the use of this great engine set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth? We have our answer in the fertile soil which spreads over the temperate regions of the globe. The glacier was God's great plough. ~ Louis Agassiz

The long summer was over. For ages a tropical climate had prevailed over a great part of the earth, and animals whose home is now beneath the Equator roamed over the world from the far South to the very borders of the Arctics ... But their reign was over. A sudden intense winter, that was also to last for ages, fell upon our globe. ~ Louis Agassiz

But unless some great revolution in nature modifies the present relative level between land and sea, it may safely be maintained that the present outer reef is the final southern boundary of the North American continent. ~ Louis Agassiz

When chemists have brought their knowledge out of their special laboratories into the laboratory of the world, where chemical combinations are and have been through all time going on in such vast proportions,-when physicists study the laws of moisture, of clouds and storms, in past periods as well as in the present,-when, in short, geologists and zoologists are chemists and physicists, and vice versa,-then we shall learn more of the changes the world has undergone than is possible now that they are separately studied. ~ Louis Agassiz

Study nature, not books. ~ Louis Agassiz

Lay aside all conceit Learn to read the book of Nature for yourself. Those who have succeeded best have followed for years some slim thread which once in a while has broadened out and disclosed some treasure worth a life-long search. ~ Louis Agassiz