David Rittenhouse

About David Rittenhouse

Family

“I have no health for a soldier, and as I have no expectation of serving my country in that way, I am spending my time in the old trifling manner, and am so taken with optics, that I do not know whether, if the enemy should invade this part of the country, as Archimedes was slain while making geometrical figures on the sand, so I should die making a telescope.”
— Letter to Thomas Barton (Sep 20, 1756) as quoted by Florian Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890) p. 39.
“The direct tendency of (Astronomy) is to dilate the heart with universal benevolence, and to enlarge its views.”
— An Oration delivered February 24, 1775, before The American Philiosophical Society held at Philadelphia, for promoting useful knowledge in [http://books.google.fr/books?id=L1oUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA569 ]

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.