What Is Engineering Quotes & Sayings

When the maker's (or fixer's) activity is immediately situated within a community of use, it can be enlivened by this kind of direct perception. Then the social character of his work isn't separate from its internal or "engineering" standards; the work is improved through relationships with others. It may even be the case that what those standards are, what perfection consists of, is something that comes to light only through these iterated exchanges with others who use the product, as well as other craftsmen in the same trade. Through work that had this social character, some shared conception of the good is lit up, and becomes concrete. — Matthew B. Crawford

This book is like an engineering masterpiece, can't be bad ! No matter what it will always be the greatest of all. — Jeff Abbott

In engineering, that only is great which achieves. It matters not what the intention is, he who in the day of battle is not victorious is not saved by his intention. — Henry Ward Beecher

My second or third year in the engineering department, I got very frustrated, and I sat down with myself and had a soul-searching conversation with myself and said, 'What I'd really like to do is see if I can write comedy.' ... I moved to L.A. stone cold. Didn't know anybody; didn't know how to go about it. Really started from scratch. — Garry Shandling

You have students in America, in Britain, who do not want to be engineers. Perhaps it is the workload, I studied engineering, and I know what a grind it is. — Azim Premji

All the food we eat, whether Brussels sprouts or pork bellies, has been modified by mankind. Genetic engineering is only one particularly powerful way to do what we have been doing for eleven thousand years. — Michael Specter

I went to engineering school, which I thought was what I wanted to do, for about two weeks. We had an orientation class and we met this guy where he worked and stuff and it was cool, but I was like, 'There is no way this is going to be my life.' — Evan Glodell

What's nice about having an engineering degree is everybody thinks you are smart. — Ato Essandoh

Science has discovered much. The engineering is wonderful, epicycles and all. And yet, as we look at this vast, elaborate structure built on layer and layer of complex constituents, can we help but be reminded of the Land of Oz. Have we found the Emerald City? Is this what we were searching for? Is this the ultimate fabric of reality? Is this all there is? — Walker Evans

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. — Freeman Dyson

The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus. — Edsger Dijkstra

Ren crossed his arms over his chest. "is it LoJacked?"
"Of course," Andy said indignantly. "That's my baby. I even have a kill switch on her."
"Then stop the engine."
Andy appeared downright horrified by Ren's suggestion. "Are you out of your mind? What if someone hits it for stalling? I had that thing on order for over a year. Custom hand built. The epitome of German engineering. I even paid extra for the paint on her. Ain't no way I'm going to chance someone denting my baby. Or, God forbid, totaling it."
Jess rolled his eyes at the boy's hissy fit. If he kept that up, he'd be putting Andy back in diapers.
He turned to Ren. "You take the air. I'll get a bike." Then he focused his attention on Andy again. "And you-"
Andy held his cell phone out to him. "Have an app. Track her down, get my car back, and beat the hell out of her ... in that precise order. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

What I'm trying to do is bring certain of those engineering values into the design process, such that when you think about form you're already incorporating those performance criteria in the process of the generation of forms. — Neri Oxman

What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up. — John Taylor Gatto

The science of lubrication, friction and wear is called tribology and is a branch of mechanical engineering. Tribologists are employed by lubricant companies, bearing manufacturers, vehicle brake manufacturers and just about anywhere you can expect to solve a problem of friction and wear. Tribologists agree that the best lubricant for roller chains is viscous oil, not wax, graphite, or silicone. Yet, you'll often find a new chain lubricant on the market that promises an improvement (they never say over what) and that chains will not suffer the same side effects as when lubricated with oil. Approach these products with sceptical caution. If the manufacturer uses words like "dry", "wax", and/or "clean", it is probably not a quality chain lubricant. Its sole redeeming feature may be that it doesn't turn black with use, itself a sign of poor lubrication. We'll discuss discolouration of the oil in due course. — Johan Bornman

What is a bow and arrow? It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war. It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering. It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb. — Clifford D. Simak

It's surreal to think that I own this beautiful island. It doesn't feel like anyone can own Lanai. What it feels like to me is this really cool 21st-century engineering project, where I get to work with the people of Lanai to create a prosperous and sustainable Eden in the Pacific. — Larry Ellison

Hire inexperience. This year we plan to hire 200 engineers - half of whom are recent grads. Young people are not burdened by years of experience. They haven't learned - or been told - what is right or wrong. With engineering, there is no tried and tested path. You try, and fail, and fix, and fail again. — James Dyson

When you engineer early successes, what you're really doing is engineering hope. Hope is precious to a change effort. — Chip Heath

How do we change the way science is taught?
Ask anybody how many teachers truly made a difference in their life, and you never come up with more than the fingers on one hand. You remember their names, you remember what they did, you remember how they moved in front of the classroom. You know why you remember them? Because they were passionate about the subject. You remember them because they lit a flame within you. They got you excited about a subject you didn't previously care about, because they were excited about it themselves. That's what turns people on to careers in science and engineering and mathematics. That's what we need to promote. Put that in every classroom, and it will change the world. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

To maximize what you get out of your college experience, I want your friends to look at your semester schedule and say "this is the weirdest schedule I've ever seen!"
Trust me on this one. If you want to be an engineer, take Engineering 101, and a crash course in philosophical literature. then take Engineering 102, and art appreciation. then Engineering 103, and Intro to Women's Rights.
You will expand your knowledge and ways of looking at the world, and become a more powerful person for it. Because that way, when you encounter difficulties, you won't only tackle the problem from the point of view of an engineer. Anybody can do that. You will be able to look at it as a scientist, a philosopher, an artist, and choose the best course of action from there. — Anonymous

If engineering cannot tell us what our houses should look like, nor in a pluralistic and non-deferential world can precedent or tradition, we must be free to pursue all stylistic options. We should acknowledge that the question of what is beautiful is both impossible to elucidate and shameful and even undemocratic to mention. — Alain De Botton

... what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names - otherwise you would be selling nothing - like "Structured Analysis and Design", "Software Engineering", "Maturity Models", "Management Information Systems", "Integrated Project Support Environments" "Object Orientation" and "Business Process Re-engineering". — Edsger Dijkstra

What is innovation if not our ticket to every business interest in the world? It's the ticket to solving the world's problems - the energy problems, the pollution problems, the global warming problems. If it isn't for science and engineering, how will we compete in the new world? — David Pogue

A classic engineering mistake and one I've made is confusing what is hard and what is valuable. — Max Levchin

The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization. — William Greider

Automobiles have always been part of my life, and I'm sure they always will be. What is it about them that moves me? The sound of a great engine, the unity and uniqueness of an automobile's engineering and coachwork, the history of the company and the car, and, of course, the sheer beauty of the thing. — Edward Herrmann

What is Civil Engineering? Technology could be a skilled engineering regulation that chargeable for appearance, structure, and maintenance of the substantial surroundings. An Engineer, he is practices as an applied scientist and use the technology equipments throughout testing technique of foundation, for the period of this method engineer get appear at the actual a part of transportation. Civil engineering lab testing equipments square measured and utilized by civil engineers. — S. Paul Kashap

Space station is, it really is one of the more, if not the most, impressive technological achievement of the modern day, not only in what we've accomplished engineering-wise but what we've accomplished on this international scale, because anybody will tell you that half the challenge is making it all work. — Kevin A. Ford

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for. — Walt Whitman

The qualities of character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness is courage; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between sloth and greed is ambition; between humility and pride is modesty; between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; between moroseness and buffoonery, good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery, friendship; between Hamlet's indecisiveness and Quixote's impulsiveness is self-control.49 "Right," then, in ethics or conduct, is not different from "right" in mathematics or engineering; it means correct, fit, what works best to the best result. The — Will Durant

The intellectual ethic of a technology is rarely recognized by its inventors. They are usually so intent on solving a particular problem or untangling some thorny scientific or engineering dilemma that they don't see the broader implications of their work. The users of the technology are also usually oblivious to its ethic. They, too, are concerned with the practical benefits they gain from employing the tool. Our ancestors didn't develop or use maps in order to enhance their capacity for conceptual thinking or to bring the world's hidden structures to light. Nor did they manufacture mechanical clocks to spur the adoption of a more scientific mode of thinking. These were by-products of the technologies. But what by-products! Ultimately, it's an invention's intellectual work ethic that has the most profound effect on us. — Nicholas Carr

Character is like 'Structural Integrity' in the field of engineering.
A construction is believed to have structural integrity when it can withstand 'impact' from anywhere and anything, functioning adequately for its desired purposes and service life, until a physical collapse proves otherwise.
'Integrity' springs from the original Latin root 'integrum', which means "Intact".
A man has INTEGRITY when he remains INTACT, despite the IMPACT of forces that seek to sidetrack him.
He will never confuse "what is" with "what ought to be", EVEN WHEN "what is" will work in his favour.
A man who will choose, not what the world forces his hands to choose, but what aligns with his destiny and will propel him to become what he is meant to become.
Such men are few, such men should be me and you. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

If we want to get beyond this whole I'm-cool-because-I-care-about-women thing, what we really need to do is we have to start encouraging women to get engineering degrees in college. — Michael Arrington

Companies want to innovate. Companies that don't innovate wither on the vine. The connection between STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and the financial stability of a nation is what needs to established. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

My own duty as a teacher ... is not so much to interpret Beethoven, Wagner, or other masters of the past, but to give what encouragement I can to the young musicians of America. I ... hope that just as this nation has already surpassed so many others in marvelous inventions and feats of engineering and commerce, and has made an honorable place for itself in literature in one short century, so it must assert itself on the ... art of music ... To bring about this result, we must trust the very youthful enthusiasm and patriotism of this country. — Antonin Dvorak

Come now, Tichy. For half a century civilization hasn't been left to its own devices. A hundred years ago a certain Dior was dictating fashions in clothing. Today this sort of regulating has embraced all walks of life. If prostheticism is voted in, I assure you, in a couple of years everyone will consider the possession of a soft, hairy, sweating body to be shameful and indecent. A body needs washing, deodorizing, caring for, and even then it breaks down, while in a prostheticized society you can snap on the loveliest creations of modern engineering. What woman doesn't want to have silver iodide instead of eyes, telescoping breasts, angel's wings, iridescent legs, and feet that sing with every step? — Stanislaw Lem

Science is concerned with what is possible while engineering is concerned with choosing, from among the many possible ways, one that meets a number of often poorly stated economic and practical objectives. — Richard Hamming

Apple raised $17 billion in a bond offering in 2013. Not to invest in new products or business lines, but to pay a dividend to stockholders. The company is awash with cash, but much of that money is overseas, and there would be a tax charge if it were repatriated to the USA. For many other companies, the tax-favoured status of debt relative to equity encourages financial engineering. Most large multinational companies have corporate and financial structures of mind-blowing complexity. The mechanics of these arrangements, which are mainly directed at tax avoidance or regulatory arbitrage, are understood by only a handful of specialists. Much of the securities issuance undertaken by Goldman Sachs was not 'helping companies to grow' but represented financial engineering of the kind undertaken at Apple. What — John Kay

Aided by the young George Pullman, who would later make a fortune building railway cars, Chesbrough launched one of the most ambitious engineering projects of the nineteenth century. Building by building, Chicago was lifted by an army of men with jackscrews. As the jackscrews raised the buildings inch by inch, workmen would dig holes under the building foundations and install thick timbers to support them, while masons scrambled to build a new footing under the structure. Sewer lines were inserted beneath buildings with main lines running down the center of streets, which were then buried in landfill that had been dredged out of the Chicago River, raising the entire city almost ten feet on average. Tourists walking around downtown Chicago today regularly marvel at the engineering prowess on display in the city's spectacular skyline; what they don't realize is that the ground beneath their feet is also the product of brilliant engineering. — Steven Johnson

To invent something is to find it in what previously exists. — Brian Arthur

I am looking at opening a school of social engineering. The McAfee School of Social Engineering has a nice ring to it. Beyond that, it is hard to say what life will bring my way. — John McAfee

Fashion is not just about what we wear, but ... fashion is also a business. It is an art, it's a career that involves science, engineering, accounting and so much more. People can learn about the math behind Charles James' designs, and think, 'Maybe I should pay closer attention to geometry this semester' — Michelle Obama

Whether you're studying electrical engineering or poetry, college is not about maximizing income, it's about becoming a better and more informed observer of the universe. And for me, at least, that what's leads to a more fulfilling life. — John Green

And one day, very soon in fact, Adi would be an adolescent. An adolescent son of a clerk. A miserable thing to be in this country. He would have to forget all his dreams and tell himself that what he wanted to do was engineering. It's the only hope, everyone would tell him. Engineering, Adi would realize, is every mother's advice to her son, a father's irrevocable decision, a boy's first foreboding of life. — Manu Joseph

In a sense, scattered dots are exactly what one would expect to see in a pre-Enlightenment, pre-mechanized world. There were disbelievers in Greek antiquity just as there were everywhere, but there was no obvious role for mass-movement atheism in a culture where ensuring the stability of the state - which depended on the favor of the gods - was prized above all else. Atheism has prospered in the West since the eighteenth century because society has a role for it: in an advanced capitalist economy based on technological innovation, it has been necessary to claw intellectual and moral authority away from the clergy and reallocate it to the secular specialists in science and engineering. It is this social function that has allowed atheism to emerge as a movement composed of individual atheists. — Tim Whitmarsh

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 ... — Henry Petroski

It turns out that, if you want to know what the U.S. military is doing in Africa, it's advantageous to be connected to a large engineering or construction firm looking for business. — Nick Turse

We want you to write it down
to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan't have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We'll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the N.I.C.E. wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you'd have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to and end. Odd thing it is
the word 'experiment' is unpopular, but not the word 'experimental.' You must'nt experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the N.I.C.E. and it's all correct! — C.S. Lewis

To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing for 10 shillings what any fool can do for a pound — Duke Of Wellington

The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them. — Eric Hoffer

I've learned that your intuition about things you don't know that much about isn't very good," Page said. "The way Elon talks about this is that you always need to start with the first principles of a problem. What are the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There's this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what's possible and interesting. Elon is unusual in that he knows that, and he also knows business and organization and leadership and governmental issues. — Ashlee Vance

At Stanford, we teach 'design thinking' - that is, we put together small, interdisciplinary groups to figure out what the true needs are and then to apply the art of engineering to serve them. — Hasso Plattner

One of my friends compared me to Bruce Banner, due to my work with radiation and human health. So I looked up Bruce Banner and this is what I found: Banner, a physicist, is sarcastic and seemingly very self-assured when he first appears in Incredible Hulk #1, but is also emotionally withdrawn in most fashions ... Banner is considered one of the greatest scientific minds on Earth, possessing "a mind so brilliant it cannot be measured on any known intelligence test." He holds expertise in biology, chemistry, engineering, physiology, and nuclear physics. — Steven Magee

Watching him pace around these homes, a twinkle in his eye, it struck me that this need to adapt to nature is what drives some people mad about renewables: even at a very large scale, they require a humility that is the antithesis of damming a river, blasting bedrock for gas, or harnessing the power of the atom. They demand that we adapt ourselves to the rhythms of natural systems, as opposed to bending those systems to our will with brute force engineering. Put another way, if extractive energy sources are NFL football players, bashing away at the earth, then renewables are surfers, riding the swells as they come, but doing some pretty fancy tricks along the way. — Naomi Klein

The reason for the difference between the architectural and engineering 'climate', so to speak, is very complex. It is partly a matter of terminology, partly a matter of historical accident, and the consequent training of architects and engineers, and mostly a matter of what is commonly supposed to be the difference in content or context - architecture being concerned with producing works of art; engineering with utility structures. — Yanni Alexander Loukissas

Go for civil engineering, because civil engineering is the branch of engineering which teaches you the most about managing people. Managing people is a skill which is very, very useful and applies almost regardless of what you do. — John Harvey-Jones

The definition of 'safe' is not strictly an engineering term; it's a societal term. Does it mean absolutely no loss of life? Does it mean absolutely no contamination with radiation? What exactly does 'safe' mean? — Henry Petroski

Science is the study of what Is, Engineering builds what Will Be. The scientist merely explores that which exists, while the engineer creates what has never existed before. — Theodore Von Karman