Topography Quotes

Many people don't give a rip about politics and know as much about public affairs as they know about the topography of Pluto.

The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.

Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers.

Give me the map of any country, its configuration, its climate, its waters, its winds, and the whole of its physical geography; give me its natural productions, its flora, its zoology, &c., and I pledge myself to tell you, a priori, what will be the quality of man in history:—not accidentally, but necessarily; not at any particular epoch, but in all;

Afghanistan is a land-locked country.

If geography is prose, maps are iconography.

We were just looking at maps.

I always design a landscape with fixed horizons whether it be mountains or a stone wall around a 20-foot-square plot.

Without geography you're nowhere.

But you have to take all of those things, you have to take into consideration the paths, the roadways, how much cloud cover there is, how much foliage cover there is, whether there are streams, all of that comes into play.

When the terrain differs from the map, you have to go with the terrain.

We're right here on this very spot. Besides, being lost is never a matter of not knowing where you are; it's a matter of not knowing where you aren't - and I don't care at all about where I'm not.

Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.

... there are shadows because there are hills.

All my early memories are of forms and shapes and textures. Moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the form. Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of fullnessess and concavities, through hollows and over peaks - feeling, touching, seeing, through mind and hand and eye. This sensation has never left me. I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and the hollow, the thrust and the contour.

On and on they flew, over the countryside parceled out in patches of green and brown, over roads and rivers winding through the landscapes like strips of matte and glossy ribbon.

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

My first occupation was to map the country.

A map is the dead body of where you've been. A map is the unborn baby of where you're going. There are no maps. Maps are pictures of what isn't.

I wanted to be a topographer when I was young.

Near the centre of that State of New York lies an extensive district of country, whose surface is a succession of hills and dales, or, to speak with greater deference to geographical definitions, of mountains and valleys.

Where roads are made I lose my way.In the wide water, in the blue sky there is no line of a track.The pathway is hidden by the birds' wings, by the star-fires, by the flowers of the wayfaring seasons.And I ask my heart if its blood carries the wisdom of the unseen way.

Northwest Ohio is flat. There isn't much up. The land is so flat that a child from Toledo is under the impression that the direction hills go is down. Sledding is done down from street level into creek beds and road cuts.