QUOTATIONS FOR ENGINEERS

"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
"Engineering is the professional art of
applying science to the optimum
conversion of natural resources to the
benefit of man."
~Ralph J. Smith
"Engineering problems are underdefined, there are many solutions,
good, bad and indifferent. The art is to
arrive at a good solution. This is a
creative activity, involving imagination,
intuition and deliberate choice."
~Ove Arup

"The joy of engineering is to find a

straight line on a double logarithmic
diagram."
~Thomas Koenig
"Engineers ... are not mere technicians
and should not approve or lend their
name to any project that does not
promise to be beneficent to man and
the advancement of civilization."
~John Fowler

"Engineers ... are not superhuman.

They make mistakes in their
assumptions, in their calculations, in
their conclusions. That they make
mistakes is forgivable; that they catch
them is imperative. Thus it is the
essence of modern engineering not
only to be able to check one's own
work but also to have one's work
checked and to be able to check the
work of others."
~Henry Petroski, To Engineer Is
Human. Engineers Creed
"Scientists dream about doing great
things. Engineers do them."
~James A. Michener

"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
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses
prevent them
~Albert Einstein

"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 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
"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, M.I.T.
"Strive for perfection in everything you
do. Take the best that exists and make
it better. When it does not exist, design
it."
~Sir Henry Royce

"The engineer has been, and is, a

maker of history."
~James Kip Finch
"Aeroplanes are not designed by
science, but by art in spite of some
pretence and humbug to the contrary. I
do not mean to suggest that
engineering can do without science, on
the contrary, it stands on scientific
foundations, but there is a big gap
between scientific research and the
engineering product which has to be
bridged by the art of the engineer."
~British Engineer to the Royal
Aeronautical Society, 1922, quoted by
Walter G. Vincenti in What Engineers
Know and How They Know It.
"Engineering refers to the practice of
organizing the design and construction
[and, I would add operation] of any
artifice which transforms the physical
world around us to meet some
recognized need."
~G. F. C. Rogers, The Nature of
Engineering, A Philosophy of
Technology.

"No one wants to learn by mistakes,

but we cannot learn enough from
successes to go beyond the state of
the art."
~Henry Petroski, To Engineer is
Human: The Role of Failure in
Successful Design.

"The history of engineering is really the

history of breakages, and of learning
from those breakages. I was taught at
college 'the engineer learns most on
the scrapheap'."
~C. A. Claremont, Spanning Space.
"The well being of the world largely
depends upon the work of the
engineer. There is a great future and
unlimited scope for the profession; new
works of all kinds are and will be
required in every country, and for a
young man of imagination and
keenness I cannot conceive a more
attractive profession. Imagination is
necessary as well as scientific
knowledge."
~Sir William Halcrow, addressing
the Institution of Civil Engineers.

"A great bridge is a great monument

which should serve to make known the
splendour and genius of a nation; one
should not occupy oneself with efforts
to perfect it architecturally, for taste is
always susceptible to change, but to
conserve always in its form and
decoration the character of solidity
which is proper."
~Jean Peronnet

"From the laying out of a line of a

tunnel to its final completion, the work
may be either a series of experiments
made at the expense of the proprietors
of the project, or a series of judicious
applications of the results of previous
experience."
~H. S. Drinker
"Engineering or Technology is the
making of things that did not
previously exist, whereas science is the
discovering of things that have long
existed."
~David Billington, The Tower and the
Bridge: The New Art of Structural
Engineering (1983), 9.
"Can one think that because we are
engineers, beauty does not preoccupy
us or that we do not try to build
beautiful, as well as solid and long
lasting structures? Aren't the genuine
functions of strength always in keeping
with unwritten conditions of
harmony? ... Besides, there is an
attraction, a special charm in the
colossal to which ordinary theories of
art do not apply."
~Gustave Eiffel, quoted in Henry
Petroski, Remaking the World:
Adventures in Engineering (1998),
173.
"Engineering is quite different from
science. Scientists try to understand
nature. Engineers try to make things
that do not exist in nature. Engineers
stress invention. To embody an
invention the engineer must put his
idea in concrete terms, and design
something that people can use. That
something can be a device, a gadget, a
material, a method, a computing
program, an innovative experiment, a

new solution to a problem, or an

improvement on what is existing. Since
a design has to be concrete, it must
have its geometry, dimensions, and
characteristic numbers. Almost all
engineers working on new designs find
that they do not have all the needed
information. Most often, they are
limited by insufficient scientific
knowledge. Thus they study
mathematics, physics, chemistry,
biology and mechanics. Often they
have to add to the sciences relevant to
their profession. Thus engineering
sciences are born."
~Yuan-Cheng ("Bert") Fung, Y.C. Fung
and P. Tong, Classical and
Computational Solid Mechanics (2001),
1.
"...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
"When faced with a problem you do not
understand, do any part of it you do
understand and then look at it again."
~Robert Heinlein

"The simplest solution is the best

solution."
~Craig Fischenich

"The best way to get a project done

faster is to start sooner."
~Jim Highsmith
"Good judgment comes from
experience, and experience comes
from bad judgment."
~Frederick P. Brooks

"Make everything as simple as

possible, but not simpler."
~Albert Einstein

"A good engineer thinks in reverse and

asks himself about the stylistic
consequences of the components and
systems he proposes."
~Helmut Jahn

"However, the occasional visit of

success provides just the excitement
an engineer needs to face work the
following day."
~Koichi Tanaka

"We are continually faced by great

opportunities brilliantly disguised as
insoluble problems."
~Lee Iacocca

"I am an engineer, but what I find

important and necessary is that you
just learn things as you go along."
~Terrence Howard

"So here we have pi squared, which an

engineer would call 10."
~Frank King

"The problems of the world cannot

possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics
whose horizons are limited by the
obvious realities. We need men who
can dream of things that never were."
~John F. Kennedy

"The more physics you have the less

Engineering you need."
~Ernest Rutherford

"If a major project is truly innovative,

you cannot possibly know its exact cost
and its exact schedule at the
beginning. And if in fact you do know
the exact cost and the exact schedule,
chances are that the technology is
obsolete.''
~Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the
design of the Grumman lunar module
that landed NASA astronauts Neil
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the
moon on July 20, 1969.