Clyde Tombaugh

How does a pansy, for example, select the ingredients from soil to get the right colors for the flower? Now there's a…

— Clyde Tombaugh

I think the driving thing was curiosity about the universe. That fascinated me. I didn't think anything about being famous or anything…

— Clyde Tombaugh

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

— Clyde Tombaugh

We were suddenly faced with the necessity of training a lot of young men in the art of navigation.

— Clyde Tombaugh

I was interested in telescopes and the way they worked because I had an intense desire to see what things looked like,…

— Clyde Tombaugh

The planets are never the same twice, they're always different, so they could compare the markings I had drawn with their current…

— Clyde Tombaugh

I thought I'd better check this third plate, which is another date, see if there's an image there in the right place…

— Clyde Tombaugh

Although my early equipment was very modest, later I made my own and they were more powerful.

— Clyde Tombaugh

A person that much interested in science is going to neglect his social life somewhat, but not completely, because that isn't healthy…

— Clyde Tombaugh

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

— Clyde Tombaugh

It was depressing, ... I worried about how I would make a living. I didn't want to stay on the farm. It…

— Clyde Tombaugh

I used to think about how nice it would be to visit the planets. Of course, I didn't expect to see in…

— Clyde Tombaugh

I used to believe there were people on Mars, and of course now we know there aren't. Mars held particular interest. I…

— Clyde Tombaugh

I realized that I would have some very tough sledding, and I was very discouraged because I didn't see much hope of…

— Clyde Tombaugh

That's the way I got along in life. I don't ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody, because I figured if I…

— Clyde Tombaugh

I have a lot of sympathy for young people because I realize how disturbed I was. How would I deal with life…

— Clyde Tombaugh

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

— Clyde Tombaugh

You have to compete with others in the field. Sometimes the competition gets pretty fierce because you're competing for funds or grants…

— Clyde Tombaugh

To me, the noise of a threshing machine is better music than a lot of music I hear nowadays. I took a…

— Clyde Tombaugh

You wonder about it and wonder how will I make an instrument that can handle this kind of a problem.

— Clyde Tombaugh

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

— Clyde Tombaugh

I think there's a supreme power behind the whole thing, an intelligence. Look at all of the instincts of nature, both animals…

— Clyde Tombaugh

I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because... nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since... I was…

— Clyde Tombaugh

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

— Clyde Tombaugh

I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a…

— Clyde Tombaugh