You are on page 1of 10

A good scientist is a person with original ideas.

A good engineer is a person who makes a


design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in
engineering.
Freeman Dyson

After graduating in engineering I went to the University of Kansas to get an MA in


economics as a vehicle for allowing me to decide if I wanted to continue in economics.
Vernon L. Smith

And then, when I went into the Navy, there was no choice. You took about half of the
hours during your naval training as naval courses and the other half were engineering.
Daniel J. Evans

Another thing that was unique about working on this stuff was that I was engineering it. I
used many of the things I had learned while I was away from the band. It sort of
vindicated my decision to leave in '87.
Lindsey Buckingham

Architecture begins where engineering ends.


Walter Gropius

Asian countries produce eight times as many engineering bachelors as the United States,
and the number of U.S. students graduating at the masters and PhD levels in these areas is
declining.
Mark Kennedy

Biological engineering is not necessarily understanding systems but rather, I want to be


able to design and build biological systems to perform particular applications.
Drew Endy

Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great
engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a
cobweb of human relationships.
Ross Perot

But I decided I wanted more education and I had to make a choice between starting law
school, which was interesting to me, and going for a graduate degree in engineering.
Daniel J. Evans

But while doing that I'd been following a variety of fields in science and technology,
including the work in molecular biology, genetic engineering, and so forth.
K. Eric Drexler

During the war years I worked on the development of radar and other radio systems for
the R.A.F. and, though gaining much in engineering experience and in understanding
people, rapidly forgot most of the physics I had learned.
Martin Ryle

Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the
necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be -
in short, with design.
Herbert Simon

For decades engineers have stood accused that their buildings do not have any cultural
value. We have attempted to liberate engineering of this accusation.
Fritz Todt

From here, it becomes an engineering problem; the engineer considers the ground motion
that will occur and evaluates the requirements of the proposed structure in the light of the
local foundation conditions.
Charles Francis Richter

Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new


definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to
liberty.
Ron Paul

I am going to design... a Station after my own fancy; that is, with engineering roofs, etc.
Isambard K. Brunel

I did graduate with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1948.


Daniel J. Evans

I didn't write because in the corps I took mining engineering of all things and, you know,
they, they graduate a mining engineer as a sort of an illiterate.
Rube Goldberg

I do engineering, not religion.


Daniel J. Bernstein

I don't know technology and engineering. I don't know accounting.


Bernie Ebbers

I don't really like to talk specifically about customers by name - but we work with nearly
all the leading manufacturers of consumer products worldwide and at quite a detailed
engineering level.
David Milne

I like engineering, but I love the creative input.


John Dykstra

I pointed out on the floor last year, after Hurricane Katrina, we were very proud that one
of our National Guard engineering battalions was called to Louisiana. And they did a
magnificent job.
Kit Bond

I received my undergraduate degree in engineering in 1939 and a Master of Science


degree in mathematical physics in 1941 at Steven Institute of Technology.
Frederick Reines
I studied chemical engineering. I was a good student, but these were the hard times of the
depression, my scholarship came to an end, and it was necessary to work to supplement
the family income.
Jack Steinberger

I suppose the reason I chose electrical engineering was because I had always been
interested in electricity, involving myself in such projects as building radios from the time
I was a child.
Koichi Tanaka

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations
have always happened naturally, anyway.
James Lovelock

I think a craft becomes an art form when the space of possible solutions becomes so huge
that engineering can't carry you through.
Bill Budge

I think I finally chose the graduate degree in engineering primarily because it only took
one year and law school took three years, and I felt the pressure of being a little behind -
although I was just 22.
Daniel J. Evans

I think the ethics and morals of genetic engineering are very complicated. It intrigues me.
Roger Spottiswoode

I think through education, belief in God, and good engineering, our children become a lot
better at what they're doing than we did, and that starts with the very first sign of life on
the face of this earth.
Evel Knievel

I wanted to further my education, so I went on to get a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and


came back and served about ten years in the Canadian Navy as what we call a combat
systems engineer.
Marc Garneau

I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's
respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always
trying to build things.
James Cameron

I was in school studying civil engineering. A guy approached me on the street and said
that I had a interesting look-very exotic. He told me I should try to be in the industry.
Thuy Trang

I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or
programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.
Steve Wozniak

I'm quite into the idea of engineering being beautiful.


Sean Booth

In 1978, I entered Tohoku University, into the Department of Electrical Engineering,


Faculty of Technology.
Koichi Tanaka

In terms of development of the company, the vast majority of our sales are in the Far East
and we will expect to strengthen our activities there, perhaps even moving some of our
engineering activities abroad.
David Milne

In these highways our engineering will reflect the National Socialist movement.
Fritz Todt

Indeed, the woes of Software Engineering are not due to lack of tools, or proper
management, but largely due to lack of sufficient technical competence.
Niklaus Wirth

nstead of an attic with a few test tubes, bits of wire and odds and ends, the attack on the
atomic nucleus has required the development and construction of great instruments on an
engineering scale.
Ernest Lawrence

Jobs are disappearing from every sector of the economy, from engineering to health care
workers, forcing hundreds of thousands of families into unemployment and low-paying
jobs.
Jerry Costello

Leonardo Da Vinci combined art and science and aesthetics and engineering, that kind of
unity is needed once again.
Ben Shneiderman

Meccano gives boys the secrets of the world's wonderful engineering structures.
Frank Hornby

My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school
English.
Eric Allin Cornell

My grandfather on my mother's side was a professor of mechanical engineering at the


Massachusetts Institute of Technology; my other grandfather was a lawyer, and one time
Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Kenneth G. Wilson

My latter schooldays and my university days were during the war, when science - physics,
in particular - was a very important and glamorous subject. A lot of us felt that if we
couldn't get into science, we might try engineering or medicine.
John Henry Carver

Nonetheless, the research budgets of the Department of Defense are under enormous
stress-and they are extremely important because they support more than 40 percent of all
federal funding for engineering schools across the country. So the threat was and is real.
Charles Vest

One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.


Robert A. Heinlein

One should proceed with caution. We may simply not be wise enough to do some of the
kinds of engineering things that people are talking about doing.
Leon Kass

Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the
process.
Arthur Erickson

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as


beyond the province of technology.
Karl Popper

Protein engineering is a technology of molecular machines - of molecular machines that


are part of replicators - and so it comes from an area that already raises some of the issues
that nanotechnology will raise.
K. Eric Drexler

Scientists at MIT and engineering schools all across America say that they could improve
the fuel economy standards for the existing set of vehicles by 10 miles per gallon using
existing technology, without compromising safety or comfort at all.
Ed Markey

So I went for engineering, specifically product design, which I enjoyed.


Debi Thomas

Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an
engineer.
Jamie Zawinski

Some of modern engineering is necessary to good art. But I think of myself is a cultural
artist.
Larry Wall

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along
with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the
unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.
Lewis Thomas

The engineering is secondary to the vision.


Cynthia Ozick

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.


Leonardo da Vinci
The public should know that the liability issues here have yet to be resolved, or even
raised. If you're a farmer and you're growing a genetically engineering food crop, those
genes are going to flow to the other farm.
Jeremy Rifkin

The same undisciplined government spending and social engineering that has undermined
our economy over the past 30 years has also been tearing at the social fabric of this land.
Stockwell Day

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering - that long and arduous
struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.
L. Sprague de Camp

The Web is now philosophical engineering. Physics and the Web are both about the
relationship between the small and the large.
Tim Berners-Lee

There has been a substitution of ideology for fact and scientific and engineering data in
this administration.
Vinton Cerf

There is a lot of interest in the arts, music, theatre, filmmaking, engineering, architecture
and software design. I think we have now transitioned the modern-day version of the
entrepreneur into the creative economy.
John Baldacci

There is no one area of chemical engineering that specifically helped me in my career as


an astronaut, it was more the general education in engineering. Also, it was a very difficult
and rigorous course. So, it made me strong and resourceful.
Leroy Chiao

There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron
bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of
imperfection.
H. G. Wells

Today, over half of China's undergraduate degrees are in math, science technology and
engineering, yet only 16 percent of America's undergraduates pursue these schools.
Cathy McMorris

We may simply not be wise enough to do some of the kinds of engineering things that
people are talking about doing.
Leon Kass

With engineering, I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again.
Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as
you can so you can make progress rapidly.
Gordon Moore
With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species
may literally collapse.
Dee Hock

You had to make a camera look like it's traveling at 300 mph, but you couldn't make it
actually travel at 300 mph so you had to slow everything down and build devices to do
that. So you were constantly engineering.
John Dykstra

You see, my ambition was not to confound the engineering world but simply to create a
beautiful piece of art.
Kit Williams
Engineering is the application of
science to the needs of
humanity. This is accomplished
through the application of
knowledge, mathematics, and
practical experience to the
design of useful objects or
processes. The design,
construction and operation of
structures and machines, using
scientific principles.
Professional practitioners of
engineering are called
engineers. Engineering involves
the knowledge of mathematical
and natural sciences (biological
and physical) gained by study,
experience, and practice,
applied with judgment and
creativity to develop ways to
utilize the materials and forces
of nature for the benefit of
mankind.

A scientist discovers that which


exists. An engineer creates that
which never was.
Theodore von Karman

These quotes signify the importance of engineering in the human lives and how it has
brought a difference to the way we live and do our daily chores. They also draw examples
of some of the most important engineers in the history of mankind and how their
inventions made a difference to our lives.

Engineering is the art of organizing and directing men and controlling the forces and
materials of nature for the benefit of the human race.
Henry G. Stott

Engineers participate in the activities which make the resources of nature available in a
form beneficial to man and provide systems which will perform optimally and
economically.
L. M. K. Boelter

Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking


encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession
of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering
is practicing the art of the organized forcing of technological change... Engineers operate
at the interface between science and society...
Dean Gordon Brown
Engineering is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the
imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to
realisation in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it
elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. This is the engineer's high
privilege.
Herbert Hoover

Inventing is the mixing of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less
materials you need.
Charles F. Kettering

What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of
design is still to obviate failure, and thus it is critical to identify exactly how a structure
may fail. The computer cannot do this by itself . . .
Henri Petroski

The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas H. Huxley

The ideal engineer is a composite ... He is not a scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is


not a sociologist or a writer; but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of
these disciplines in solving engineering problems.
N. W. Dougherty

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

The engineer is the key figure in the material progress of the world. It is his engineering
that makes a reality of the potential value of science by translating scientific knowledge
into tools, resources, energy and labor to bring them into the service of man ... To make
contributions of this kind the engineer requires the imagination to visualize the needs of
society and to appreciate what is possible as well as the technological and broad social age
understanding to bring his vision to reality.
Sir Eric Ashby

In mathematics you don't understand things, you just get used to them.
J. von Neumann

Engineering is an activity other than purely manual and physical work which brings about
the utilization of the materials and laws of nature for the good of humanity.
R. E. Hellmund

Engineering is the professional art of applying science to the optimum conversion of


natural resources to the benefit of man.
Ralph J. Smith

Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving the energy, kinetic and potential,
provided and stored up by nature for the use of man. It is the business of engineering to
utilize this energy to the best advantage, so that there may be the least possible waste.
William A. Smith

I have had my results for a long time, but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.
Karl Friedrich Gauss

The burden of the lecture is just to emphasize the fact that it is impossible to explain
honestly the beauty of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, without their
having some deep understanding of mathematics. I am sorry, but this seems to be the case.
Richard Feynman

Engineering is the practice of safe and economic application of the scientific laws
governing the forces and materials of nature by means of organization, design and
construction, for the general benefit of mankind.
S. E. Lindsay

Engineering is the professional and systematic application of science to the efficient


utilization of natural resources to produce wealth.
T. J. Hoover and J. C. L. Fish

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow
field.
Niels Bohr

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Wernher von Braun

. . . a failed structure provides a counterexample to a hypothesis and shows us


incontrovertibly what cannot be done, while a structure that stands without incident often
conceals whatever lessons or caveats it might hold for the next generation of engineers.
Henri Petroski

You might also like