Simon Newcomb Quotes

48 Sourced Quotes

Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent.

Simon Newcomb
As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity.

Simon Newcomb
The mathematician of to-day admits that he can neither square the circle, duplicate the cube or trisect the angle. May not our mechanicians, in like manner, be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of that great class of problems with which men can never cope... I do not claim that this is a necessary conclusion from any past experience. But I do think that success must await progress of a different kind from that of invention.

Simon Newcomb
The beginning of 1856 found me teaching in the family of a planter named Bryan, residing in Prince George County, Md., some fifteen or twenty miles from Washington.

Simon Newcomb
As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.

Simon Newcomb
The astronomer cannot afford to waste his energies on hopeless speculation about matters of which he cannot learn anything.

Simon Newcomb
I had not yet gotten into the world of light. But I felt as one who, standing outside, could knock against the wall and hear an answering knock from within.

Simon Newcomb
Science has its competition, as keen as that which is the life of commerce. But its rivalries are over the question who shall contribute the most and the best to the sum total of knowledge; who shall give the most, not who shall take the most.

Simon Newcomb
I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.

Simon Newcomb
We cannot set any limit either to the discovery of new laws of nature or to the ingenious combination of devices to attain results which now look impossible.

Simon Newcomb
The astronomer of to-day may look back upon Hipparchus and Ptolemy as the earliest ancestors of whom he has positive knowledge. He can trace his scientific descent from generation to generation, through the periods of Arabian and mediaeval science, through Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, La Place and Herschel, down to the present time.

Simon Newcomb
As frequently happens in history of science, the first discoverer of a new field has himself to be discovered by antiquarian research.

Simon Newcomb
James Edward Oliver might have been one of the great mathematicians of his time had he not been absolutely wanting in the power of continuous work.

Simon Newcomb
Its [science] animating spirit is love of truth. Its pride is to do the greatest good to the greatest number. It embraces not only the whole human race but all nature in its scope.

Simon Newcomb
What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies at stated hours under the constant guidance of a teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed.

Simon Newcomb
The time was not yet ripe for the growth of mathematical science among us, and any development that might have taken place in that direction was rudely stopped by the civil war.

Simon Newcomb
If the material bodies which surround us were placed in a space of more than three dimensions, their kinematic susceptibilities would be increased in a manner which, at first sight, would seem very extraordinary.

Simon Newcomb
Until I was four years old I lived in the house of my paternal grandfather, about two miles from the pretty little village of Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name.

Simon Newcomb