Quotes About Geography

Marriage is only an accident of situation, situation an accident of history, history of geography.

Geography is not egalitarian.

The Zaire River, for example, is 2,900 miles long and has a volume of water second only to that of the Amazon, but its rapids and waterfalls near the sea prevent ocean-going ships from reaching inland.

Whether people are united by navigable waterways or cut off by rugged mountains or other geographical barriers has enormous cultural as well as economic and political significance.

Britain's iron ore and coal deposits were located near to one another and both were located near the sea-an

Eratosthenes , the mapmaker who was the first man to accurately measure the size of the Earth, was a librarian.

The real cocktail party conversation would probably go something like this: "Actually, I have a degree in geography." "Geography? Wow, I'm terrible with maps. I bet YOU know all your state capitals, though!" (Geographer's smile freezes, left eye starts to twitch uncontrollably.)

Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, has argued that geography seems less relevant than ever in a world where nonstate actors -- malleable entities like ethnicities, for example -- are as powerful and important as the ones with governments and borders. Where on a map can you point to al-Qaeda? Or Google, or Wal-Mart? Everywhere and nowhere.

There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing our world and our relation to it, that charms us, calls to us, won't let us look anywhere else in the room if there's a map on the wall.

Many cases of twentieth-century American map geekdom, it seems, began the same way that many twentieth-century Americans began: conceived in the backseats of Buicks

In his book Why Geography Matters, the geographer Harm de Blij argues that the West's three great challenges of our time—Islamist terrorism, global warming, and the rise of China—are all problems of geography. An informed citizenry has to understand place, not because place is more important than other kinds of knowledge but because it forms the foundation for so much other knowledge.

Of course, on a map oriented along the lines of this jingle: North to the ceiling, South to the floor, West to the window, East to the door it did appear that the Nile River flowed up. I can't tell you much else about what happened in that classroom that year.

Nature, I have constantly argued in my work, is the real superpower of this godless universe. It is the ultimate disposer of human fate, randomly recarving geography over 10 000-year epochs.

in the unique case of a country's geographic position, it is difficult to consider this factor as anything other than a cause, unless we assume that in prehistoric times peoples migrated to climates that fit their concepts of power distance, which is rather far-fetched.

Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture.

This highlights the single most important geopolitical fact in the world: the United States controls all of the oceans. No other power in history has been able to do this. And that control is not only the foundation of America's security but also the foundation of its

The General was right. No one dies of hunger here - you reach out your hand and pluck a mango. That's why there is no progress. Cold countries have more advanced civilizations because the climate forces people to work.

Algunos eran de una ignorancia monumental, llegaban a la universidad sin poder situar a Chile en un mapa y seguramente tampoco eran capaces de situar su propio país en el mundo: creían que Estados Unidos era el mundo.

I fell in love with my country because of the stories my grandfather told me and because of our travels together through the south. He taught me history and geography, showed me maps, made me read Chilean writers, corrected my grammar and handwriting. As a teacher, he was short on patience but long on severity; my errors made him red with anger, but if he was content with my work he would reward me with a wedge of Camembert cheese

Again and again, to be sure, on the way to America, and under many other circumstances, man has passed through the most adverse climates and has survived, but he has flourished and waxed strong only in certain zones.

Depending on which of the many hydrogeological zones of India you tap into, the water can either be easy to reach or incredibly difficult to suck out.

Delaware: a state that has three counties when the tide is out, and two when it is in.

Canada is not so much a country as a clothesline nearly 4,000 miles long. St John's in Newfoundland is closer to Milan, Italy than to Vancouver.

Saskatchewan is much like Texas - except it's more friendly to the United States.