The following quotations, which pertain to geography or, further down the page, scientific inquiry, have been submitted by various people in the Geography Department. If you wish to add one, please email the webmaster. Be sure to give the source of the quotation so we can attribute it accurately.

We'd also like to let you know that there is an on-line collection of geography jokes, humorous stories, and goofy answers to quizes put together by Matt Rosenberg, a UC Davis graduate in geography. Staff member Bill Norrington submitted this source. (Be forewarned: annoying ads come with accessing this page.)

QUOTATIONS ABOUT GEOGRAPHY

BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary, submitted by staff Bill Norrington.

Wars are God's way of teaching Americans geography.

Attributed to Ambrose Bierce by Alexander Murphy (a professor of geography at the University of Oregon and President of the Association of American Geographers in 2003) in an article titled "Awash in a Sea of Geographical Ignorance," emailed by Prof. Keith Clarke, November 19, 2003.

Without geography, you're nowhere.

Jimmy Buffett
in A Pirate Looks at Fifty (Random House); printed in Reader's Digest, March 2003, submitted by staff Susanna Baumgart.

For each facet of humanness -- rationality or irrationality, faith, emotion, artistic genius, or political prowess -- there is a geography. For each geographical interpretation of the earth, there are implicit assumptions about the meaning of humanness...the common concern is terrestrial dwelling; humanus literally means "earth dweller."

Anne Buttimer, Geography and the human spirit, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1993, submitted by Prof. Jim Proctor.

Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.

Robert Byrne; webpage source as of 2-20-03, http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Robert_Byrne/, submitted by staff Bill Norrington and grad student Richard Middleton.

As a young man, my fondest dream was to become a geographer. However while working in the customs office I thought deeply about the matter and concluded that it was far too difficult a subject. With some reluctance, I then turned to physics as a substitute.

Falsely attributed to Albert Einstein. According to Matt Rosenberg, "This quote was actually written by Duane F. Marble, Professor of Geography at Ohio State University. Professor Marble wrote the quote and put it on his office door at SUNY at Buffalo in response to the cool welcome received by the geography department which had taken over part of the physics building.

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.

James A. Garfield (1831 - 1881), submitted by graduate student Richard Middleton.

I have the crazy notion to depict in a single work the entire material universe, all that we know of the phenomena of heaven and earth, from the nebulae of stars to the geography of mosses and granite rocks....It should portray an epoch in the spiritual genesis of mankind -- in the knowledge of nature. But it is not to be taken as a physical description of the earth: it comprises heaven and earth, the whole of creation....My title is Cosmos.

Alexander von Humboldt, 1834, in a letter to a friend published in D. Botting's Humboldt and the Cosmos, Harper and Row Publishers, 1973, P. 257, submitted by Prof. Jim Proctor.

Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.

Terry Pratchet, The Last Continent, as found on a quotations website which has a section of sayings contributed by users of the site -- which, thus, may not be accurate in attributions (http://www.quotationspage.com/collections.html#contrib), submitted by staff Bill Norrington.

I should be careful opening my wallet in public.

David Simonett, humorously warning then-Dean Bruce Rickborn, while informing him of the extensive, and here-to-fore secret government use of remote sensing and aerial photography. Rickborn related this conversation, which probably occurred in the early 1970s, to staff Susanna Baumgart in 2003.

GIS will do for human geography what remote sensing did for physical geography.

David Simonett, said when selling the UCSB Administration on granting the Geography Department a senior position in GIS. Quotation was shared with staff Susanna Baumgart by Prof. Joel Michaelsen, 2003.

All things are related but near things are more related than distant things.

Waldo Tobler, Professor Emeritus of Geography, UCSB; quotation from correspondence of Tobler with Reginald Golledge, submitted by several people.

An appropriate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.

John W. Tukey; submitted by graduate student Matt Rice.

QUOTATIONS CONCERNING SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Go to nature, look and see for yourself.

Louis Agassiz (founder of glacial theory), inscribed on the Science Museum in Ann Arbor Michigan, submitted by Prof. Keith Clarke.

If humans don't understand a problem, they write a lot of formulas.
When they elucidate its essence, at best only two are left.

Niels Bohr, quotation within graduate student Tihomir Kostadinov's high school astronomy book (Nikolov, N., et.al. Astronomy. Prosveta, Sofia 1996), translated from Bulgarian by him.

You read my sentence with greater fear than I heard it.
Burning someone does not prove him wrong.

Giordano Bruno, quotation within graduate student Tihomir Kostadinov's high school astronomy book, translated from Bulgarian by him.

Concern for man himself and his fate must form the chief interest for all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Albert Einstein
in Einstein Scrapbook by Ze'ev Rosenkranz (Johns Hopkins Press) and the Einstein exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; printed in Popular Science, March 2003, submitted by staff Susanna Baumgart.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein
in Einstein Scrapbook by Ze'ev Rosenkranz (Johns Hopkins Press) and the Einstein exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; printed in Popular Science, March 2003, submitted by staff Susanna Baumgart.

[S]cientific integrity [is]...a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results....[T]he idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular
direction or another.

Richard P. Feynman (the Nobel laureate who gained universal fame for exposing the defective "O-ring" in the Challenger shuttle disaster), 1985, submitted by Susanna Baumgart.

...we are cognizant that one of the defining attributes of an academic is congenital inability to distinguish 'quality' from 'what I do.'

D.A. Plane and P.A. Rogerson, "The Ten Commandements of Migration Research," Regional Science: Retrospect & Prospect, edited by Boyce, nijkamp, and Shefer, Springer Verlag, 1991; submitted by Prof. Stuart Sweeney.

Science is comprised of facts, just like a building is comprised of bricks.
But the simple accumulation of facts resembles science
as much as a pile of bricks resembles a building.

Henri Poincare, quotation within graduate student Tihomir Kostadinov's high school astronomy book (Nikolov, N., et.al. Astronomy. Prosveta, Sofia 1996), translated from Bulgarian by him.

Theories crumble, but good observations never fade.

Harlow Shapley, quotation within grad student Tihomir Kostadinov's high school astronomy book (Nikolov, N., et.al. Astronomy. Prosveta, Sofia 1996), translated from Bulgarian by him.