Geography Quotes

The scientific world of the time was in the midst of a terrible ferment, with discoveries and realizations coming at an unseemly rate. To many in the ranks of the conservative and the devout, the new theories of geology and biology were delivering a series of hammer blows to mankind's self-regard. Geologists in particular seemed to have gone berserk, to have thrown off all sense of proper obeisance to their Maker... Mankind, it seemed, was now suddenly rather – dare one say it? – insignificant. He may not have been, as he had eternally supposed, specially created.

~ Simon Winchester

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

~ David Mitchell

All Authors come from the unified countrynent known as Australia. Authors live in the future where love is external.

~ Will Advise

There is adventure in finding compelling stories and exploring complex issues in challenging environments, but there is also a responsibility to tell those stories accurately and objectively.

~ K. Lee Lerner

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

~ Mark Twain

North Korean troops gathering… inside North Korea.That is unheard of.They were massing very close to the border.North Korea is the size of Ohio. It would be geographically challenging for them to gather very far from the border.

~ Sylvain Neuvel

War does one good—it teaches people geography.

~ Will Durant

Dreams are our only geography—our native land.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Everywhere's been where it is ever since it was first put there. It's called geography.

~ Terry Pratchett

Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.

~ Neil Gaiman

The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies. Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth.Right, like geologists.Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle...So, it's like oceanography or hydrology.And the atmosphere.Meteorology, climatology...It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet.How is that different from ecology or environmental science?Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci.Some geographers specialize in different world regions.Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department.They're not.(Long pause.)So, uh, what is it that do study then?

~ Ken Jennings

We’ve gone from a planet ruled by natural geography to political geography to kinetically functional geography to a cyber geography that is ruled by ideological variation rather than politically constructed boarders.

~ James Scott

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

~ Aleksandar Hemon

Individual identities and national destines were shaped by the tripod of history, geography, and philosophy.

~ Patrick Mendis

Krakatoa, spelled “Krakatau” in Indonesian, is a volcano in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. It is also the name of an island group made up of what is left of a larger island, consisting of three volcanic peaks that were destroyed by the catastrophic 1883 eruption. This explosive force was equivalent to 100,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs. It was the loudest sound ever heard in modern history and could be heard up to 3,000 miles away. At that time, the explosion caused huge tsunamis which killed more than 36,000 people and sent out shock waves that were recorded worldwide for almost a week. Years later in 1927, “Anak Krakatau” a new island mountain formed in its place and is again the location of volcanic activity. It is considered a part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire.

~ Hank Bracker

It is no coincidence that, on all four sides, in all four corners, the borders of the Roman Empire stopped where wine could no longer be made.

~ Neel Burton

History rhymes, but geography endures.

~ Andrew C. Katen

As any distance we take from things give us an outside perspective, so does taking a geographical distance—offering us a new vantage point over our lives.

~ Lauren Klarfeld

Geography is destiny.

~ Abraham Verghese

let us start by picturing the Japan archipelago lying in the sea by the Chinese mainland. If its proximity allowed it to become part of the Sinosphere and acquire a written culture, its distance benefited the development of indigenous writing. The Dover Strait, separating England and France, is only 34 kilometers (21 miles) wide. A fine swimmer can swim across it. In contrast, the shortest distance between Japan and the Korean Peninsula is five or six times greater, and between Japan and the Chinese mainland, twenty-five times greater. The current, moreover, is deadly. . . . Japan's distance from China gave it political and cultural freedom and made possible the flowering of its own writing.

~ Minae Mizumura

The topography of literature, the fact in fiction,is one of my pleasures -- I mean, where the living road enters the pages of a book, and you are able to stroll along both the real and imagined road.

~ Paul Theroux

Don Quixote is not just Don Quixote, La Mancha is not just geography, It is our personal territory—Terra Nostra.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

It is the relationship between the physical environment and the environed organism, between physiography and ontography (to coin a term), that constitutes the essential principles of geography today.

~ William Morris Davis

I’m learning geography is about lossand so I keep moving

~ Paul Guest

Do you understand the sadness of geography?

~ Michael Ondaatje

Man was first a hunter, and an artist: his early vestiges tell us that alone. But he must always have dreamed, and recognized and guessed and supposed, all the skills of the imagination. Language itself is a continuously imaginative act. Rational discourse outside our familiar territory of Greek logic sounds to our ears like the wildest imagination. The Dogon, a people of West Africa, will tell you that a white fox named Ogo frequently weaves himself a hat of string bean hulls, puts it on his impudent head, and dances in the okra to insult and infuriate God Almighty, and that there's nothing we can do about it except abide him in faith and patience.This is not folklore, or quaint custom, but as serious a matter to the Dogon as a filling station to us Americans. The imagination; that is, the way we shape and use the world, indeed the way we see the world, has geographical boundaries like islands, continents, and countries. These boundaries can be crossed. That Dogon fox and his impudent dance came to live with us, but in a different body, and to serve a different mode of the imagination. We call him Brer Rabbit.

~ Guy Davenport

Since he had given up men he had taken up geography. He visited a new sight or a new neighborhood nearly every weekend.

~ Caleb Crain

Science rock: The pursuit of science, lead us to the beautiful places of the world.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific

~ James A. Michener

The ancient paused for a moment, as if his strength were failing. Yet I sensed that there was more to tell. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered: 'The Gond kingdoms have fallen, their people live dispersed in poverty: the teak trees and the jungles have been cleared... but the importance of the Gonds must not be forgotten!

~ Tahir Shah

This happened back east of course. I've heard that term a lot since coming to this part of the country. But I never think of the term as a marker of geography. It's a reference to time, a statement about time, about all the densities of being and experience, it's time disguised, it's light-up time, shifting smoky time tricked out as some locus of stable arrangement. When people use that term they're talking about the way things used to be before they moved out here, the way the world used to be, not just New Jersey or South Philly, or before their parents moved, or grandparents, and about the way things still exist in some private relativity theory, some smoky shifting mind dimension, or before the other men and women came this way, the ones in Conestoga wagons, a term we learned in grade school, a back-east term, stemming from the place where the wagons were made. (pg.333)

~ Don Delillo

To lovers of adventure and novelty, Africa displays a most ample field.

~ James Rennell

And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.

~ Jennifer E. Smith

If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity of God?—that was believed long before Moses was born. Special providence?—that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages. The rights of property?—theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of animals?—that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of life?—there have always been laws against murder. The wickedness of perjury?—truthfulness has always been a virtue. The beauty of chastity?—the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no other God?—that has been the burden of all religions.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

The truth is, until you know any different, the island is enough.Actually, I know different. And it's still enough.

~ Maggie Stiefvater

If one is seeking for Heaven on earth, has slept in geography class.

~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec

The hardest part of being a Canadian kid is having to color in Nunavut with a crayon in school, hell on earth.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

More than ever, I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity to cope with change.

~ Kathleen Norris

I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.

~ Brian Andreas

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

~ Jorge Luis Borges