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18th century Quote by D. V. Ager

“It may be said of many palaeontologists, as Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper said recently of 18th century historians: "Their most serious error was to measure the past by the present".”

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18th century Century Errors Historian History May Past Professors Said Science Serious Time

More by D. V. Ager

Experts always tend to obscure the obvious.

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Palaeontologists cannot live by uniformitarianism alone. This may be termed the Phenomenon of the Fallibility of the Fossil Record.

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In the preface to his great History of Europe, H. A. L. Fisher wrote: "Men wiser than and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave ..." It seems to me that the…

Changes, cyclic or otherwise, within the solar system or within our galaxy, would seem to be the easy and incontrovertible solution for everything that…

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Sedimentation in the past has often been very rapid indeed and very spasmodic. This may be called the "Phenomenon of the Catastrophic Nature of…

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In fact, books are still being published by the lunatic fringe with the same explanation. In case this book should be read by some…

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It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student…have now been debunked.

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Let us make an arbitrary decision (by a show of hands if necessary) to define the base of every stratigraphical unit in a selected…

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Though the theories of plate tectonics now provide us with a modus operandi, they still seem to me to be a periodic phenomenon. Nothing…

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More 18th century quotes

“And the differences thence arising [between the constitution of men and women] are no ways sufficient to argue more natural strength in the one than in the other, to qualify them more for military labours. Are not the Women of different degrees of strength, like the Men? Are there not strong and weak of both sexes? Men educated in sloth…

Lady Sophia Fermor

Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that's the result of 400…

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The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson…

Anthony Kennedy

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By 18th century standards, they [Great Britain] were the freest, most dynamic, most willing to challenge tradition and authority. They had the highest wages and highest living standard, and probably the most engagement between the populace and the government of any country. Then the United States took those same qualities to the nth degree, and the British were suddenly appeared…

Charles R. Morris

“If from immemorable time, the Men had been so little envious, and so very impartial, as to do justice to our talents, by admitting us to our right of sharing with them in public action; they wou'd have been as accustomed to see us filling public offices, as we are to see them disgrace them; (...) A Schurman, with a…

Lady Sophia Fermor

Compare the scale and magnifcence of Versailles with St James's - the brick-built hovel in which the 18th-century kings of England lived. What was then the most powerful monarchy in the world housed its sovereigns in a converted leper hospital, yet, at the same time, parliament provided the magnificent palaces of Chelsea and Greenwich as hospitals for retired soldiers and…

Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man that we need to lead us into the 18th…

David Letterman

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“I shou'd not myself have thought [Cato] worth so much notice as I have here taken of him; but that the Men are weak enough in general, to suffer their sense to be led away captive, by such half-thinking retailers of sentences. Among whom, This in particular, was he worth the pains, might be easily proved to have been often…

Lady Sophia Fermor

The theory of social contracts extends as far back as Plato. However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.

Simon Mainwaring

To my three sons, Peter, Scott, and Alexander who pulled me from the 18th Century and back into the present on a regular basis…

Joseph J. Ellis

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"The Constitution" has something called The Emoluments Clause. That's just a fancy, 18th century word for no foreign government payments. And Donald Trump is collecting foreign government payments and other benefits throughout his business.It is a direct violation of "The Constitution" and unless he divests, not just operations, he must divest from all business interests or he will be in…

Norman L. Eisen

The United States may have retained more of the intellectual imprint of the British 18th century than Britain itself.

William Rees-Mogg

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