After a time it became unbearable, the lesson blinding in its cruelty: but if the universe didn’t get you, other sentient beings would. - Stephen Baxter

It was a striking demonstration of how geomorphology, the shape of the landscape, dominates human geography.

What makes you think anybody with power will listen to a bunch of scientists? They never have before.

Hutton became very critical of a system where appointments depended not on merit but on the support of those in power. Of one possible opening for Watt he wrote, ‘I think it only needs to have a man properly bestir himself but that is what few political people do unless to serve themselves.’