19th-century Engineer Quotes

Henry Ford

Alfred Nobel

Charles Babbage

Douglas MacArthur

George B. McClellan

Vannevar Bush

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Progress is not made by pulling off a series of stunts. Each step has to be regulated. A man cannot expect to progress without thinking.

Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition — in having to put forth the best within you.

Henry J. Kaiser

In general the problems of civil engineers are given to them by God Almighty. They are the problems of nature. On the other hand mechanical and electrical work has problems which man, to a certain extent, has created for himself.

Modern science constitutes a method for understanding and modifying the world but has no inherent direction, whereas modern religion describes a messianic world view but lacks a useful method to bring about this state of affairs.

Frederick Grinnell

To his son, Ferry Porsche, after carefully inspecting the design sketches for the Cisitalia racing car developed by Ferry:

I would have approached it exactly the way
you did!

Ferdinand Porsche

Work is the universal topic; the weather is too serious a subject to chatter about lightly.

Francis Hopkinson Smith

The all-important word to the engineer is WHY, and it is astonishing how few people in the ordinary pursuits of human affairs ever think it worthwhile to trouble themselves about that question, or to make much effort to find out whether the answer suggested will bear analysis.

William Le Roy Emmet

The writer feels that management is also destined to become more of an art, and that many of the, elements which are now believed to be outside the field of exact knowledge will soon be standardized tabulated, accepted, and used, as are now many of the elements of engineering.

Frederick Winslow Taylor

In many cases, a jig borer is a "jig eliminator." In other words, such a machine may be used instead of a jig either when the quantity of work is not large enough to warrant making a jig or when there is insufficient time for jig making.

Franklin D. Jones

Students are here not for service or for culture, but for the selfish end of preparing for salary to come. Constantly I hear them asking, 'If I change over to your course, what kind of a job will it help me to get when I graduate?' Students are weighing every subject they take on the scales of jobs to come.

In course of time the Brothers Cowper removed the manufacture of their printing machines from London, to Manchester. There they found skilled and energetic workmen, ready to carry their plans into effect.

Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest.

Robert Henry Thurston

There is an engineering approach to (our) problems. The engineer has an objective. He studies and analyzes the materials with which he has to deal. He acquaints himself with the natural forces which he cannot change, which are more powerful than he is, but to which he must adapt himself so that he may make use of them.

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

Charles Babbage

Some people will say that a respect for regulations is essential and that engineers need not check the hypotheses on which they are based. This is a convenient theory, but a false one. Men who draw up regulations can be wrong like other men.

Eugène Freyssinet

To ordinary minds all creation is mystery; to cultivated minds there is much that is not quite inexplicable.

The men who miss success have two general alibis: 'I'm not a genius' is one; and the other, 'There aren't the opportunities today there used to be'.

Charles M. Schwab

Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire. Those who fail will die.

The measurement of the angles was made by Mr. J. E. Hilgard, whose zeal and the ability with which he has discharged these duties deserve notice here, as they have received it in the reports of the chief of his party.

Julius Erasmus Hilgard

I am a chisel which cuts the wood; the Carpenter directs it. If I lose my edge, He must sharpen me; if he puts me aside and takes another, it is His own good will. None are indispensable to Him. He will do his work with a straw equally as well.

Charles George Gordon

Earth, thou grain of sand on the shore of the Universe of God; thou Bethlehem, amongst the princely cities of the heavens; thou art, and remainest, the Loved One amongst ten thousand suns and worlds, the Chosen of God! Thee will He again visit, and then thou wilt prepare a throne for Him, as thou gavest Him a manger cradle; in His radiant glory wilt thou rejoice, as thou didst once drink His blood and tears, and mourn His death! On thee has the Lord a great work to complete.

Wilhelm von Pressel

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

Henry Martyn Robert

There is another and very important ground for standardization and that is the desirability of having parts interchangeable. Standards of exchange have long been in general use, and these have, most usually, been fixed with a view to convenient use rather than on a scientific basis. The units of weight and measure are examples of this form of standard. They may not even be the most logical, or most convenient, but once established they can, in general, be changed only by slow degrees, if at all.

Dexter S. Kimball

We never had any use for Taylor nor any of the efficiency or scientific management crowd. They never realized that human toil was the last thing in the world you had to be efficient about; the only way to be really efficient is to eliminate it entirely, and this would have been heresy to any of the Taylor, Gant, Barth, Cook efficiency crowd. It is sad to contemplate that men of the technical ability of the names mentioned in this paragraph were so lame in their thinking and social outlook that they missed the boat so completely. Who in hell wants to be efficient with a shovel, and what sense would there be even if you succeeded? They should have had their heads opened with a shovel, it might have been more effective.

On owning a commercial TV franchise in Britain:

Like having a licence to print your own money.

He made a million pounds in the first year

Christopher Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson