Engineer Quotes

Nuclear fusion of light elements like hydrogen or helium would permit approaching the speed of light. It seems very attractive to refuel your space ships where the fuel is.

Wilson Greatbatch

As the component parts of all new machines may be said to be old[,] it is a nice discriminating judgment, which discovers that a particular arrangement will produce a new and desired effect.... Therefore, the mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc. like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as the exhibition of his thoughts; in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea to the world.

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

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form.

So, here we are - all part of this great hologram called Creation, which is everybody else's SELF.It's all a cosmic play, and there is nothing but you!

It's a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction... [n]ot even when confronted by infinity.

What loss is there in dignity, what worry is there of failure?

Building software implies various stages of planning, preparation and execution that vary in kind and degree depending on what's being built. [...]
Building a four-foot tower requires a steady hand, a level surface, and 10 undamaged beer cans. Building a tower 100 times that size doesn't merely require 100 times as many beer cans.

Steve McConnell

It is not given to our weak intellects to understand the steps of Providence as they occur: we comprehend them only as we look back upon them in the far-distant past.

George B. McClellan

There are four purposes of improvement: easier, better, faster, and cheaper. These four goals appear in the order of priority.

By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.

Learning to inhibit unwanted contractions of muscles that function without, or in spite of, our will, is the main task in coordinated action.

Moshé Feldenkrais

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

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

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

One advantage of static factory methods is that, unlike constructors, they have names.

Managers' typical response to my argument about free time is, 'That's all well and good, but there are things I have to do.' Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things.

The fifth century BC historian Herodotus called Egypt 'the gift of the Nile'. The Egyptians themselves went a lot further. They claimed that their sacred river had its source among the stars.

First law: The pesticide paradox. Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffective.

The greatest risk we face in software development is that of overestimating our own knowledge.

If I had my way... there wouldn't be a single lion or tiger in captivity anywhere in the world. They never take to it. They're never happy. They never settle down... You can see it in their eyes...

Remote Sensing is defined as the acquisition of information about an object without being in physical contact with it.

I have no knowledge other than that gained through my own eyes.

Vannoccio Biringuccio

You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person. Good people are hard to find nowadays. And they're a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week.

In every crisis, if you look carefully, you will spot an opportunity. My insistence is on finding and seizing that opportunity. I never try to side-step a crisis. Rather, the more monstrous the crises, the more I am tempted to rush at it, grasp it by the horns and man-oeuvre it until it gives me what I want

Verghese Kurien