Clyde Tombaugh Quotes

• I have a lot of sympathy for young people because I realize how disturbed I was. How would I deal with life in the future? What would I do for a living?

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Sympathy, People, Realizing

  49 Copy quote

• Young man, I am afraid you are wasting your time. If there were any more planets they would have been found long before this.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Science, Men, Long

  11 Copy quote

• I think the driving thing was curiosity about the universe. That fascinated me. I didn't think anything about being famous or anything like that, I was just interested in the concepts involved.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Thinking, Curiosity, Driving

  7 Copy quote

• I was interested in telescopes and the way they worked because I had an intense desire to see what things looked like, so I learned how to use telescopes and find things in the sky.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Sky, Desire, Use

  11 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, a lot of the concepts in the Bible are based on ancient mythology that doesn't fit the findings of science.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Science, Fit, Ancient

  11 Copy quote

• That's the way I got along in life. I don't ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody, because I figured if I can't do it myself, I don't deserve to get it.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Jealous, Way, Remember

  8 Copy quote

• The planets are never the same twice, they're always different, so they could compare the markings I had drawn with their current photographs and they knew that I was drawing what I was really seeing and it wasn't copied from somewhere.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Drawing, Different, Photograph

  6 Copy quote

• I think there's a supreme power behind the whole thing, an intelligence. Look at all of the instincts of nature, both animals and plants, the very ingenious ways they survive. If you cut yourself, you don't have to think about it.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Nature, Cutting, Animal

  8 Copy quote

• By the time I was in sixth grade I could bound every country in the world from memory.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Country, Memories, World

  7 Copy quote

• A person that much interested in science is going to neglect his social life somewhat, but not completely, because that isn't healthy either. So one has to work it out according to one's own inclinations, how one wants to proportion these things.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Science, Healthy, Want

  4 Copy quote

• You have to have hope. Otherwise, I don't think you could handle it. Of course, you have to have both luck and pluck to make it.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Thinking, Luck, Anticipation

  4 Copy quote

• I was always looking ahead. I used to do all kinds of things for entertainment. When I was young, we had no radio, no TV. We were 30 miles from the public library, out in the sticks in Western Kansas, and so I'd do arithmetic exercises.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Exercise, Kansas, Library

  17 Copy quote

• I used to think about how nice it would be to visit the planets. Of course, I didn't expect to see in my lifetime what has happened. I knew it would happen some day, but it came along faster than I at first thought.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Nice, Thinking, Would Be

  8 Copy quote

• Can you imagine young people nowadays making a study of trigonometry for the fun of it? Well I did.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Inspirational, Fun, Teenager

  90 Copy quote

• I guess they just took it for granted that that was what I was interested in and let nature take its course.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Nature, Granted, Courses

  7 Copy quote

• When I was in the fourth grade, I became intensely interested in geography and I learned it well.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Keys, Geography, Grades

  9 Copy quote

• I used to believe there were people on Mars, and of course now we know there aren't. Mars held particular interest. I was curious what kind of beings they would look like.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Believe, People, Looks

  6 Copy quote

• I realized that I would have some very tough sledding, and I was very discouraged because I didn't see much hope of getting into the field I wanted to get into with no college education.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Education, College, Fields

  7 Copy quote

• How does a pansy, for example, select the ingredients from soil to get the right colors for the flower? Now there's a great miracle. I think there's a supreme power behind all of this. I see it in nature.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Nature, Flower, Thinking

  102 Copy quote

• You have to compete with others in the field. Sometimes the competition gets pretty fierce because you're competing for funds or grants to do your work, the financial work.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Competition, Fields, Financial

  9 Copy quote

• It was depressing, ... I worried about how I would make a living. I didn't want to stay on the farm. It didn't offer the challenge I wanted and yet, without a college education, I felt that I was really out of luck.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Education, Depressing, College

  7 Copy quote

• I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a threshing rig steam engine and I loved the machinery.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Father, Two, Telescopes

  53 Copy quote

• To me, the noise of a threshing machine is better music than a lot of music I hear nowadays. I took a man's place in the threshing crew when I was only 14 years old.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Men, Years, Machines

  7 Copy quote

• I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because... nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since... I was so unprepared for such a strange sight that I was really petrified with astonishment.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Reflection, Sight, Doubt

  7 Copy quote

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