American Engineer Quotes

To define it rudely but not inaptly, [engineering] is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.

Arthur M. Wellington

The manufacturer of chemicals has all the griefs of a maker of shoes, or bolts and nuts, or ready-to-wear clothes, and has just one more grief in addition — i.e., troubles occurring in chemical transformations.

While there is a reasonable possibility that a peacetime armed force could be entirely voluntary, I am certain that an armed force involved in a major conflict could not be voluntary

Crawford Greenewalt

We offer them mediocrity while calling it magic. We offer them the illusion of intelligent software, seducing them into surrendering the task of thinking to the machine. Of course, the machine isn't thinking, which means that nobody is.

Larry Constantine

Like many fields in their early stages, the software field has had its share of project disasters: the software equivalents of Beauvais Cathedral, the S. S. Titanic, and the "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The frequency of these disaster projects is a serious concern: a recent survey of 600 firms indicated that 35% of them had at least one "runaway' software project.

If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error he is liable to give up some truth with it, and in accepting the arguments of the other man he is sure to get some error with it.

When it's all over, you'll realize that the answer is already within you.

In 1492 Columbus knew less about the far Atlantic than we do about the heavens, yet he chose not to sail with a flotilla of less than three ships.... So it is with interplanetary exploration: it must be done on the grand scale.

Wernher von Braun

This decade holds many changes for the United States, but the greatest needs regarding America's productivity in the 1990s, are better education and employee training.

Gregory Balestrero

To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.

Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.

Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, has argued that geography seems less relevant than ever in a world where nonstate actors -- malleable entities like ethnicities, for example -- are as powerful and important as the ones with governments and borders. Where on a map can you point to al-Qaeda? Or Google, or Wal-Mart? Everywhere and nowhere.

Not much comes easy in this world, Sonny. If it does, it's best to be suspicious of it. It's probably not worth much.

The key thing about all the world's big problems is that they have to be dealt with collectively. If we don't get collectively smarter, we're doomed.

Douglas Engelbart

The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increased by proper study is, in most cases, so great as to be almost incredible.

Looking back to data, we can see if the consequences are plausible; looking forward to theory, we can see if general principles are suggested.

John Henry Holland

The data must be explained by the evolutionist, but they are predicted by the creationist.

Henry M. Morris

Java development without a little heresy would be a dull place, and a dangerous one.

Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.

Julie Anne Peters

Every day people engaged in the clever defiance of their own intuition become, in midthought, victims of violence and accidents. So when we wonder why we are victims so often, the answer is clear: It is because we are so good at it.

Gavin de Becker

The term closed loop-learning process refers to the idea that one learns by determining what s desired and comparing what is actually taking place as measured at the process and feedback for comparison. The difference between what is desired and what is taking place provides an error indication which is used to develop a signal to the process being controlled.

Harold Chestnut

Psychopaths know intellectually what is immoral they just don't have a feeling of immorality about it.

The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.

I talk to myself through the computer. I ask myself questions, leave things to be looked at again, things that you would do with a notepad. It turns out today that it's much better today to do with a personal computer rather than a notepad.

When Commodore acquired Amiga in 1984, the legion of Amiga loyalists thought the world would beat a path to the better-mousetrap door. It didn't happen. The Amiga languished.

The things which concerned him more than anything else were the what and the why—the what because he felt it was necessary to know absolutely what you were questioning and what you were doing or what concerned you, and then the why, the depth type of thinking which showed you the reason for doing the thing and would perhaps indicate clearly whether you should maintain what was being done or should change what was being done.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth