A Quote by Simon Newcomb

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

Simon Newcomb

Quote Topics

Air Flight Heavier Impossible Insignificant Machines Than Utterly

Quote Author

Simon Newcomb
Canadian - Mathematician
March 12, 1835 - July 11, 1909

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

Lord Kelvin

Well, gentlemen, do you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion by machines heavier than air? ... You ask yourselves doubtless if this apparatus, so marvellously adapted for aerial locomotion, is susceptible of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to conquer space if we cannot devour it. I wanted the air to be a solid support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I must be stronger than the wind, and I am.

Jules Verne

The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space] . . . presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished. An analogy such as this may be misleading, and we believe it to be so in this case.

Richard van der Riet Woolley

All flight is based upon producing air pressure, all flight energy consists in overcoming air pressure.

Otto Lilienthal

On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. … I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

J. B. Priestley

The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fullfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into new heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

Milan Kundera

I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.

Claude Monet

Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive . . . [It] reeks with injustice, and is fundamentally un-American

Ronald Reagan

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

Immanuel Kant

I think it impossible, utterly impossible, for any Englishman to live here [in America], and be happy.

Charles Dickens

It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god.

Robert Green Ingersoll

There is nothing more certain in nature than that it is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated.

Francis Bacon

The cause of rain is now, I consider, no longer an object of doubt. If two masses of air of unequal temperatures, by the ordinary currents of the winds, are intermixed, when saturated with vapour, a precipitation ensues. If the masses are under saturation, then less precipitation takes place, or none at all, according to the degree. Also, the warmer the air, the greater is the quantity of vapour precipitated in like circumstances. ... Hence the reason why rains are heavier in summer than in winter, and in warm countries than in cold.

John Dalton

If you start lifting weights, you will expect to put weight on, as muscle is heavier than fat. But you have to look more at your body shape - you will get heavier - but you might get smaller and heavier at the same time, which is fine. And it doesn't really matter what you weigh as long as you are happy with your shape and size!