Georges Cuvier

Moreover, it thus follows that not a great deal of time was needed for the large animals of the three major parts…

— Georges Cuvier

Thus it cannot be denied that the masses which today form our highest mountains were originally in a liquid state; for a…

— Georges Cuvier

My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to…

— Georges Cuvier

Secondly, the nature of the revolutions which have altered the surface of the earth must have had a more decisive effect on…

— Georges Cuvier

The observer listens to nature: the experimenter questions and forces her to reveal herself.

— Georges Cuvier

It is my object, in the following work, to travel over ground which has as yet been little explored and to make…

— Georges Cuvier

But the revolutions and changes which are responsible for the present state of the earth are not limited to the upsetting of…

— Georges Cuvier

It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly…

— Georges Cuvier

To spread healthy ideas among even the lowest classes of people, to remove men from the influence of prejudice and passion, to…

— Georges Cuvier

It is to them [fossils] alone that we owe the commencement of even a Theory of the Earth ... By them we…

— Georges Cuvier

The works which this man [Joseph Banks] leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to…

— Georges Cuvier

In spite of what moralists say, the, animals are scarcely less wicked or less unhappy than we are ourselves. The arrogance of…

— Georges Cuvier

It has been long considered possible to explain the more ancient revolutions on... the Earth surface by means of these still existing…

— Georges Cuvier

Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the…

— Georges Cuvier

Since nothing can exist that does not fulfil the conditions which render its existence possible, the different parts each being must be…

— Georges Cuvier

It is in this mutual dependence of the functions and the aid which they reciprocally lend one another that are founded the…

— Georges Cuvier

Nurse, it was I who discovered that leeches have red blood.[]On his deathbed when the nurse came to apply leeches

— Georges Cuvier

The lowest and most level land areas show us, especially when we dig there to very great depths, nothing but horizontal layers…

— Georges Cuvier

At the sight of a single bone, of a single piece of bone, I recognize and reconstruct the portion of the whole…

— Georges Cuvier

“The works which this man leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent;…

— Georges Cuvier

A famous anecdote concerning Cuvier involves the tale of his visitation from the devil—only it was not the devil but one of…

— Georges Cuvier

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.

— Georges Cuvier

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them,…

— Georges Cuvier

The traces of upheavals become more impressive when one moves a little higher, when one gets even closer to the foot of…

— Georges Cuvier

If they [enlightened men] take any interest in examining, in the infancy of our species, the almost obliterated traces of so many…

— Georges Cuvier