Famous quotes by Archaeologists

Archaeologists study the traces of past lives to better understand how people adapted, created, and remembered. Their words reveal patient curiosity, respect for evidence, and the thrill of discovery balanced with careful interpretation. The quotes gathered from practitioners across digs, labs, and museums illuminate methods, ethics, and the human stories behind artifacts and ruins. Whether you're new to the subject or deeply engaged in it, these perspectives invite reflection on time, memory, and the responsibilities that come with unearthing the past.

"To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one's tail"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any student of early culture proposing that the crude contemporary art of the early Babylonians is the product of a civilization earlier than that of the Nile"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"Isn't it true that the fault of birth rests somewhat on the child? I believe it's we who led our parents on to bear us, and it's our unborn children who make our flesh itch"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"I've been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I'm quite ordinary, & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven"

T. E. Lawrence, Archaeologist

"There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture, took place for the first time"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"It is this conception of the unity of the human career which is perhaps the greatest achievement of historical study, since it gained a place analogous to that of natural science"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"This recognition of the earlier human background, now so obvious to us, did not come all at once, for the inclusion of history itself in university instruction is an event less than two centuries old"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"Today the traveller on the Nile enters a wonderland at whose gates rise the colossal pyramids of which he has had visions perhaps from earliest childhood"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"There is but little room for doubt that Egypt led the way in the creation of the earliest known group of civilizations which arose on both sides of the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia in the fourth millennium B.C"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"Disapproval is a very important factor in all progress. There has really never been any progress without it"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"But it is obvious that our fathers, whose efforts have planted these great and prosperous cities along the once lonely trails of our own broad land, received all the fundamentals of civilization as a heritage from their European ancestors"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"We of America are especially fitted to visualize and to understand the marvellous transformation of a wilderness into a land of splendid cities"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"In any case, in so far as our knowledge of the universe carries us, the advent of civilization for the first time on our globe represents the highest ascent of the life processes to which evolution had anywhere attained"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"In the more recently disclosed field of history in the ancient Near East, however, there has been no such sense of responsibility displayed by historians either in Europe or America"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"It is the recognition of history as a record of human experience which has inevitably resulted in the inclusion of this conquest of civilization within the framework of a complete human history"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

"To the present writer a careful study of the facts now available seems to leave no doubt that civilization was born at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean"

James H. Breasted, Archaeologist

See the complete list of archaeologist people