John Wesley Powell Quotes

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things.

– John Wesley Powell

You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it, you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.

– John Wesley Powell

Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words.

– John Wesley Powell

Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libation or prayer.

– John Wesley Powell

The verb is relatively of much greater importance in an Indian tongue than in a civilized language.

– John Wesley Powell

The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence.

– John Wesley Powell

Indian nouns are extremely connotive; that is, the name does more than simply denote the thing to which it belongs – in denoting the object, it also assigns to it some quality or characteristic.

– John Wesley Powell

The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.

– John Wesley Powell