Thought for the Day

"Geography teaches an appreciation and understanding of the landscape around us and of those landscapes beyond our personal experience. It teaches both a knowledge and a sense of place, the basic knowledge of the theatre of the world on which mankind acts out its days. It teaches the dimensions of reality and, far more important, the concerns which underlie the character and the quality of our continuing existence. It is a subject, above all, of both head and heart. With rigour and precision of technique and concept we seek to measure, to describe and understand the mechanisms which dictate the shifting patterns of the occupance of earth. But earth is home, shot through with beauty and with squalor, opportunity and despair. We cannot be detached from home: our attempted understanding of its face is quickened by our wonder in its delights and our concern for its condition: in wonder and in concern, as much as in understanding, is the mark of relevance in geography."

J Allan Patmore

Patmore, J. (1980). Geography and Relevance. Geography, 65(4), 265-283. Retrieved August 26, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40570301