Simon Newcomb Quotes

48 Sourced Quotes

My father was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men.

Simon Newcomb
My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher.

Simon Newcomb
He who through vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe; Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle suns, What varied being peoples every star, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.

Simon Newcomb
If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.

Simon Newcomb
It is remarkable that modern science has shown us more mysteries in the sun than it has explained; so that we find ourselves farther than before from a satisfactory explanation of solar phenomena.

Simon Newcomb
My first undertaking in the way of scientific experiment was in the field of economics and psychology.

Simon Newcomb
Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

Simon Newcomb
It is, therefore, contrary to all the analogies of nature to suppose that life began only on a single world.

Simon Newcomb
Ten decimals are sufficient to give the circumference of the earth to a fraction of an inch, and thirty decimals would give the circumference of the whole visible universe to a quantity imperceptible with the most powerful microscope.

Simon Newcomb
Life not totally unlike that on the earth may therefore exist upon this planet [Mars] for anything that we know to the contrary.

Simon Newcomb
The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as useful knowledge. His domain is as wide as nature itself, and he best fulfills his mission when he leaves to others the task of applying the knowledge he gives to the world.

Simon Newcomb
So small is the earth in comparison with the celestial spaces, that if one should shut his eyes and fire a gun at random in the air, the chance of bringing down a bird would be better than that of a comet of any kind striking the earth.

Simon Newcomb
In the motions of the stars we are brought face to face with eternity and infinity, covered by no veil whatever.

Simon Newcomb
I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account.

Simon Newcomb
Great and numerous as are the unsolved problems of our science, knowledge is now advancing into regions which, a few years ago, seemed inaccessible. Where it will stop none can say.

Simon Newcomb
Our solar system is like a little colony, separated from the rest of the universe by an ocean of void space almost immeasurable in extent.

Simon Newcomb
If we admit the hypothesis of immortality, it is difficult to see how we could ever reach any proof of it derived from experience.

Simon Newcomb
All scientific conclusions drawn from statistical data require a critical investigation of the basis on which they rest.

Simon Newcomb
The fact is that our knowledge of the universe has been in the nature of a slow and gradual evolution, commencing at a very early period in human history, and destined to go forward without stop, as we hope, so long as civilization shall endure.

Simon Newcomb
It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings, not only animated, but endowed with reason, inhabit countless worlds in space.

Simon Newcomb
The so-called problems of astronomy are not separate and independent, but are rather the parts of one great problem, that of increasing our knowledge of the universe in its widest extent.

Simon Newcomb
As the great captain of industry is moved by the love of wealth, and the politician by the love of power, so the astronomer is moved by the love of knowledge for its own sake, and not for the sake of its application.

Simon Newcomb
So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution.

Simon Newcomb
The result was that, if it happened to clear off after a cloudy evening, I frequently arose from my bed at any hour of the night or morning and walked two miles to the observatory to make some observation included in the programme.

Simon Newcomb
The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.

Simon Newcomb
When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck.

Simon Newcomb
In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.

Simon Newcomb
The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.

Simon Newcomb
In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate.

Simon Newcomb
One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

Simon Newcomb