Louis Agassiz quotes

Louis Agassiz was a Swiss-American biologist and geologist renowned for his groundbreaking work on glaciers and the Ice Age. His research significantly advanced the study of natural history, especially in North America. He also played a key role in founding scientific institutions and educating future generations of scientists. Here are 13 of his quotes:

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)
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. View quote
Louis Agassiz
The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal. View quote
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 light, there must have been light to enter it. View quote
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. View quote
Louis Agassiz
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. View quote
Louis Agassiz
The study of Nature is intercourse with the Highest Mind. View quote
Louis Agassiz
I cannot afford to waste my time making money. View quote
Louis Agassiz
Facts are stupid until brought into connection with some general law. View quote
Louis Agassiz
The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs. View quote
Louis Agassiz
But whatever its defects, the classification of Linnæus was the first attempt at grouping animals together according to certain common structural characters. (Louis Agassiz)
The glacier was God's great plough set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth. View quote
Louis Agassiz
Study nature, not books. View quote
Louis Agassiz