Looking for Civil Engineering Quotes?

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A  bridge is built for us to pass over; it is a work of utility, and which  should endure. It should be in keeping with its object, solid, clean,  simple, well executed without vain ornament.

- Paul Sejourne
Grandes Voutes

A  common mistake that people make when trying to design something  completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete  fools.

- Douglas Adams
Mostly Harmless

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'.

A  good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a  person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as  possible.

- Freeman Dyson

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

An engineer is someone who is good with figures, but doesn't have the personality of an accountant.

- An Arts graduate's view of engineers

An engineer is someone who washes his hands before going to the toilet.

- Anon

Another  places upon his nose a pair of paper or wooden spectacles; he performs  the duty of engineer, comes, goes, makes a plan, looks at the workmen,  draws lines, plays the pedant, cries that everything is being ruined,  causes the work to be abandoned and resumed at his will, and directs it  at great length and as absurdly as possible.this character is termed the  geometer, and he does his best to make himself unendurable to those who  wield the spade and pickaxe.

- George Sand
The Haunted Pool

A  person filled with gumption doesn't sit about stewing about things.  He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see  what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption. If  you're going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is  the first and most important tool. If you haven't got that you might as  well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won't  do you any good.

- Robert M Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Moytorcyle Maintenance

Architects  and engineers are among the most fortunate of men since they build  their own monuments with public consent, public approval and often  public money.

- John Prebble
The High Girders

A theory may be so rich in descriptive possibilities that it can be made to fit any data.

- Phillip Johnson-Laird
The Computer and the Mind

Boring - see Civil Engineers.

-
UK Yellow Pages (this reference has been removed from new editions of the Yellow Pages)

But  even experimental scientists today, despite Einstein and Darwin, seem  loath to abandon the search for an eternal changeless unhistorical  reality of which pure mathematics could be the model.

- Gordon Childe
What Happened in History

Civil  Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of Power in  Nature for the use and convenience of man; being that practical  application of the most important principles of natural Philosophy which  has in a considerable degree realized the anticipations of Bacon, and  changed the aspect and state of affairs in the whole world. The most  important object of Civil Engineering is to improve the means of  production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal  Trade. This applied in the construction and management of Roads -  Bridges - Rail Roads - Aqueducts - Canals - river navigation - Docks,  and storehouses for the convenience of internal intercourse and  exchange; - and in the construction of Ports - Harbours - Moles -  Breakwaters - and Lighthouses, and in the navigation by artificial Power  for the purposes of commerce.

- Thomas Tredgold
Charter of the British Institution of Civil Engineers

Electronic  calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot  solve; but no government subsidised commission of engineers and  physicists could create a worm.

- Joseph Wood Krutch
The Twelve Seasons, 1949

Engineering  is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into  shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot  properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect  the extent of our ignorance.

- Dr AR Dykes
British Institution of Structural Engineers, 1976.

Engineering  problems are under-defined, 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

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.

- GFC Rogers
The Nature of Engineering, A Philosophy of Technology.

Engineering  ... to define rudely but not inaptly, is the art of doing that well  with one dollar, which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.

- Arthur Mellen Wellington
The Economic Theory of Railway Location (1911)

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

I  take the vision which comes from dreams and apply the magic of science  and mathematics, adding the heritage of my profession and my knowledge  of nature's materials to create a design.
I organise the efforts  and skills of my fellow workers employing the capital of the thrifty and  the products of many industries, and together we work toward our goal  undaunted by hazards and obstacles.
And when we have completed our task all can see that the dreams and plans have materialised for the comfort and welfare of all.
I am an Engineer, I serve mankind, by making dreams come true.

- Anon (supposedly found pinned to a site hut during the construction of the Konkan railway)
Contributed by Allan L Smith

Experience  serves not only to confirm theory, but differs from it without  disturbing it, it leads to new truths which theory only has not been  able to reach.

- Dalembert
Quoted in introduction to PS Girard Traite Analytique de la Resistance des Solides

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petar; and't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon.
- William Shakespeare
Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4

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.
- HS Drinker
Tunneling, Explosive Compounds and Rock Drills (1878)

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.
- Sir John Harvey Jones

giving advice on University courses to sixth form students on the BBC's Troubleshooter programme
He  ... insists that no mathematical formula, however exact it may appear  to be, can be of greater accuracy than the assumptions on which it is  based, and he draws the conclusion that experience still remains the  great teacher and final judge.
- James Kip Finch

Engineering Classics, commenting on Sejourne's Grandes Voutes
He was living like an engineer in a mechanical world. No wonder he had become dry as a stone.
- Simone de Beauvoir
The Mandarins

His  father loved him dearly, but his work, that of a civil engineer, had  left him with but little time for his family. Energetic, active, and  always taken up with some responsible work, he did not spoil his  children with excessive tenderness.
- Mme Estafavia
Russian short story: Vania

How could you do anything so vicious?
It was easy my dear, don't forget I spent two years as a building contractor.
- Priscilla Presley & Ricardo Montalban in The Naked Gun

I  am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven there are two  matters on which I hope for enlightement. One is quantum electrodynamics  and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I  am rather more optimistic.
- Sir Horace Lamb
1932, Quoted in Computational Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, by Anderson, Tannehill, and Pletcher, 1984.

[I  am] opposed to the laying down of rules or conditions to be observed in  the construction of bridges lest the progress of improvement tomorrow  might be embarrassed or shackled by recording or registering as law the  prejudices or errors of today.
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel
speaking to the 1847 Commission set up after the collapse of the River Dee

If  a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction  firm and the house collapses and causes the death of the owner of the  house - that builder shall be put to death. If it destroys property, he  shall restore whatever it destroyed, and because he did not make the  house firm he shall rebuild the house which collapsed at his own  expense. If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its  construction meet the requirement and a wall falls - that builder shall  strengthen the wall at his own expense.
- The Code of Hammurabi, c. 2250 BC

Improvement makes strait roads: but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.
- William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I'm the chap who builds motorways through places like Twyford Down and when people complain I say f... off.
- Sam Small
giving a Young Conservative's view of the civil engineering profession (unclear whether this view is his)

In  my intercourse with mankind, I have always found those who would thrust  theory into practical matters to be, at bottom, men of no judgement and  pure quacks.
- John Smeaton
Quoted in Engineering Classics of James Kip Finch

In practical work he can be ingenious with regard to modifying apparatus; he uses engineering rather than imagination.
- Head Teacher's reference for a student applying to University

In free society art is not a weapon.... Artists are not engineers of the soul.
- President John F Kennedy
Address at Dedication of the Robert Frost Library, Nov 1963.

I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have - power.
- Matthew Boulton (British Engineer)
quoted in Boswell's life of Dr Johnson

It  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 realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it  brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living  and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer's high privelege.
 The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other  professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see  them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his  mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin  air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects,  cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the  politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope  that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did  it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria  that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the  end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a  cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning.  All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably  appear to jolt his smooth consummation.
On the other hand, unlike  the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier,  destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his  daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of  science with life, comfort and hope.

No doubt as years go by people  forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some  politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who  used other peoples money with which to finance it. But the engineer  himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness that flows from  his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the  verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolade he wants.
- Herbert Hoover
The Profession of Engineering (from his memoirs)

It  takes an engineer to undertake the training of an engineer and not, as  often happens, a theoretical engineer who is clever on a blackboard with  mathematical formulae but useless as far as production is concerned.
- The Rev EB Evans
Letter to Frederick Handley Page

Let  him not be grasping nor have his mind preoccupied with ... receiving  perquisites, but let him with dignity keep up his position by  establishing a good reputation. No work can be rightly done without  honesty and incorruptibility.
- Vitruvius
De Architectura

"Mach  2 travel feels no different." a passenger commented on an early  Concorde flight. "Yes," Sir George replied. "That was the difficult  bit."
- Sir George Edwards, co-director of Concorde development
Quoted in Kenneth Owen, "Concorde, New Shape in the Sky"

Mary,  I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, and next year, and  the year after that. I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town  off my shoes and I'm gonna see the world! ... Then I'm gonna come back  home and go to college and see what they know, and then I'm gonna build  things. I'm gonna build airfields, I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred  storeys high, I'm gonna build bridges a mile long!
- James Stewart
in It's a Wonderful Life

Men  build bridges and throw railroads across deserts, and yet they contend  successfully that the job of sewing on a button is beyond them.  Accordingly, they don't have to sew buttons.
- Heywood Broun
Seeing Things at Night, 'Holding a Baby'

My  father wisely determined that I should go through all the gradations,  both practical and theoretical, which could not be done if I went to the  University, as the practical parts, which he considered the most  important, must be abandoned; for he said, after a young man has been  three or four years at the University of Oxford or Cambridge, he cannot,  without much difficulty, turn himself to the practical part of civil  engineering.
- Sir John Rennie
Autobiography, 1875, quoted in A. Burton (1992) 'The Railway Builders'

No  greater care is required upon any works than upon such as are to  withstand the action of water; for this reason, all parts of the work  need to be done exactly according to the rules of the art which all  workmen know, but few observe.
- Sextus Julius Frontinus
De Aquis

Nor aught availed him now
To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
- John Milton
Paradise Lost

Nothing can be of great worth or holy which is the work of builders and mechanics.
- Zeno, Stoic Philosopher
quoted in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy

Nothing is so inspiring as seeing big works well laid out and planned and a real engineering organisation.
- Frederick Handley Page
after a visit to Short & Harland where they were building his aircraft, just before WWII

No village or man shall be forced to build bridges at river banks, except those who ought to do so by custom and law.
-
Chapter 23 of Magna Carta

Oh! Ill fated bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay,
By telling the world fearlessly and without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less the chance of us being killed.
- William McGonagall, the 'Poet and Tragedian of Dundee'

One has to watch out for engineers - they begin with the sewing machine and end up with the atomic bomb.
- Marcel Pagnol
Critiques des Critiques

Phases of a Project:
1 -- Exultation
2 -- Disenchantment
3 -- Search for the Guilty
4 -- Punishment of the Innocent
5 -- Praise for the Uninvolved
- Anon
Contributed by Rob Price

Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but the real task is to alter it.
- Karl Marx
Eleven Theses on Feuerbach

Pure  scientists have by and large been dim-witted about engineers and  applied science. They couldn't get interested. They wouldn't recognise  that many of the problems were as intellectually exacting as pure  problems, and that many of the solutions were as satisfying and  beautiful. Their instinct - perhaps sharpened in this country by the  passion to find a new snobbism wherever possible, and to invent one if  it doesn't exist - was to take it for granted that applied science was  an occupation for second rate minds. I say this more sharply because  thirty years ago I took precisely that line myself.
- CP Snow
The Two Cultures and A Second Look

Rise thou prostrate Ingineer, not all thy undermining Skill shall reach my Heart.
- George Farquhar
The Beaux' Strategem, Act V, Scene II

So  far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to  understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change  the world, has been important from the first, and has continually  increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science  from men's thoughts. ... The triumph of science has been mainly due to  its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this  aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a  technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world.  The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent.
- Bertrand Russell
History of Western Philosophy

[Solutions  of problems of resistance are] not to be found in meditation in a  cabinet but in going over to the workshops of an arsenal, where Galileo  sought to apply the laws of statics and the resistance of solids, [that  is] to places that fall between the arts and science.
- PS Girard
Traite Analytique de la Resistance des Solides

some day it might be possible to tax them
- Michael Faraday
reply to Gladstone on being asked what use his discoveries were

"Still," he concluded, "they put me out to a good trade."
"Surely, dearest, it is almost a profession to be an engineer."
"There's nothing undignified in labour. Trade'll do me."
- Malcolm MacDonald
The World from Rough Stones

Tell me, Mr Hoover, what are your interests?
Madam, I am an Engineer
Really? I took you for a gentleman.
- Herbert Hoover
Conversation on making the acquaintance of a lady on a steamship - apparently comment meant as a compliment

...(that)  any general system of conveying passengers would ... go at a velocity  exceeding ten miles an hour, or thereabouts, is extremely improbable.
- Railway engineer Thomas Tredgold, 1835

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
- Neal Armstrong

The  contractors do not hesitate to enrich themselves at the expense of the  King or of those who work for them; & the engineers or inspectors of  the works, on the contrary, have only in mind the honesty with which  they act and to be highly esteemed; & they do not hesitate to regard  the former as their enemies, when they are unfaithful.
- Hubert Gautier
Traite des Ponts (1716)

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'.
- CA Claremont
Spanning Space

The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic diagram.
- Thomas Koenig, ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de

The  major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that  cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go  wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and  repair.
- Douglas Adams
Mostly Harmless

The means by which  we live has outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific  power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and  misguided men.
- Martin Luther King Jr
Strength to Love, 1963

The  newly placed earth of the Road is not immediately to be compacted, as  some will claim. Two or three months of time, some rain, and those who  pass over the Road better assure this than if we compact with women and  girls for many days; this is an unnecessary expense for the contractor.
- Hubert Gautier
Traite des Chemins (1715)

The  philosophies that have been inspired by scientific technique are power  philosophies, and tend to regard everything non-human as mere raw  material. Ends are no longer considered; only the skillfulness of the  process is valued. This also is a form of madness. It is, in our day,  the most dangerous form, and the one against which a sane philosophy  should provide an antidote
- Bertrand Russell
History of Western Philosophy.

[The  problem of recognition is a] consequence of these arts having been, in  the early ages of European society, long practised only by domestic  slaves and degraded classes of men, they are less honoured than they  deserve; and still bear, even when their importance is acknowledged,  part of the stigma attached to the vices and debased state of their  first professors.
- Mechanics Magazine 30 August 1823
Quoted in George Street. New Civil Engineer, 8 Feb 1996

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

The  words art, artisan, and artificial all come from the Latin word ars,  and reinforce the notion that beauty and utility have been inextricably  linked. The jazz musician Duke Ellington is believed to have said that  if any music sounds good, it is good. The beauty of utility goes back at  least as far as the flint axe and is as contemporary as the supersonic  Concorde.
- Carroll Pursell
White Heat - People and Technology

The  words 'theory' and 'practice' are of Greek origin; they carry our  thoughts back to the ancient philosophers by whom they were contrived,  and by whom they were also contrasted and placed in opposition, as  denoting two mutually conflicting and mutually inconsistent ideas. ...  [this fallacy] based on a double system of natural laws retarded for  centuries the development of physical science, notably mechanics.
- William Rankine
Applied Mechanics

There  are three possible roads to ruin - women, gambling and technology. The  most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the  surest is with technology.
- Georges Pompidou
Sunday Telegraph 1968.

There  can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is  the story of civilisation. By it we can readily measure an important  part of a people's progress.
- Franklin D Roosevelt
Oct 18 1931

Therefore O students study mathematics and do not build without foundations.
- Leonardo Da Vinci
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Quaderni 1 7 r.

...as for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.
- Bertrand Russell
on the rise of science, History of Western Philosophy

This  is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of engineers. The  spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by  men who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
- Lancelot Hogben
Science for the Citizen

Very  nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that  sort of place. They teach you to be a gentleman there. In the  Polytechnic they teach you to be an engineer or such like.
- George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman (1903) act 2

We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.
- Winston Churchill
Time 1960

We  were shepherded in for our first lecture on engineering drawing in a  studio on the top floor of a building in Shakespeare Street. There we  were confronted by the lecturer, a Mr Rawlinson, an elderly gentleman  with a nicotine stained moustache. He looked around the room at us and  then said, "I know you lot. Your parents said, 'Our Jim's not very  bright in the head but he's good with his hands, so we'll make him an  engineer'."
- Frank Vann
on his First Day at University College Nottingham, 1941

Well if you ever plan to motor west
Try take my way on the highway that's the best
Get your kicks on Route 66
- Bobby Troup
Route 66

What need the bridge much broader than the flood?
- William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing

When engineers and quantity surveyors discuss aesthetics and architects study what cranes do we are on the right road.
- Ove Arup
1980

Whilst surveying what do you think I did? - only what others have done - fell in love!
- Letter from Joseph Locke to Robert Stephenson
Quoted in A. Burton (1992) 'The Railway Builders'

Why Engineers Don't Write Recipe Books
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
532.35 cm3 gluten
4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
4.9 cm3 refined halite
236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)
 To a 2 litre jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall  heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/°F-ft2-hr, add ingredients  one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2 litre reactor  vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients  four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous.
To  reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the  homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and  ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point  in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result  of an exothermic reaction.
Using a screw extrude attached to a #4  nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm).  Heat in a 460°K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with  Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55),  or until golden brown.
Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25°C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.
- Anon
Brought to my attention by Mike Morton

You have been found guilty of indulging in unnatural practices under one of London's most beautiful bridges.
- Judge reprimanding prisoner before sentence
Urban myth at the Bar

No  greater care is required upon any works than upon such as are to  withstand the action of water; for this reason, all parts of the work  need to be done exactly according to the rules of the art which all  workmen know, but few observe.
- Sextus Julius Frontinus
De Aquis

Nor aught availed him now
To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
- John Milton
Paradise Lost

Nothing can be of great worth or holy which is the work of builders and mechanics.
- Zeno, Stoic Philosopher
quoted in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy

Nothing is so inspiring as seeing big works well laid out and planned and a real engineering organisation.
- Frederick Handley Page
after a visit to Short & Harland where they were building his aircraft, just before WWII

No village or man shall be forced to build bridges at river banks, except those who ought to do so by custom and law.
-
Chapter 23 of Magna Carta

Oh! Ill fated bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay,
By telling the world fearlessly and without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less the chance of us being killed.
- William McGonagall, the 'Poet and Tragedian of Dundee'

One has to watch out for engineers - they begin with the sewing machine and end up with the atomic bomb.
- Marcel Pagnol
Critiques des Critiques

Phases of a Project:
1 -- Exultation
2 -- Disenchantment
3 -- Search for the Guilty
4 -- Punishment of the Innocent
5 -- Praise for the Uninvolved
- Anon
Contributed by Rob Price

Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but the real task is to alter it.
- Karl Marx
Eleven Theses on Feuerbach

Pure  scientists have by and large been dim-witted about engineers and  applied science. They couldn't get interested. They wouldn't recognise  that many of the problems were as intellectually exacting as pure  problems, and that many of the solutions were as satisfying and  beautiful. Their instinct - perhaps sharpened in this country by the  passion to find a new snobbism wherever possible, and to invent one if  it doesn't exist - was to take it for granted that applied science was  an occupation for second rate minds. I say this more sharply because  thirty years ago I took precisely that line myself.
- CP Snow
The Two Cultures and A Second Look

Rise thou prostrate Ingineer, not all thy undermining Skill shall reach my Heart.
- George Farquhar
The Beaux' Strategem, Act V, Scene II

So  far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to  understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change  the world, has been important from the first, and has continually  increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science  from men's thoughts. ... The triumph of science has been mainly due to  its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this  aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a  technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world.  The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent.
- Bertrand Russell
History of Western Philosophy

[Solutions  of problems of resistance are] not to be found in meditation in a  cabinet but in going over to the workshops of an arsenal, where Galileo  sought to apply the laws of statics and the resistance of solids, [that  is] to places that fall between the arts and science.
- PS Girard
Traite Analytique de la Resistance des Solides

some day it might be possible to tax them
- Michael Faraday
reply to Gladstone on being asked what use his discoveries were

"Still," he concluded, "they put me out to a good trade."
"Surely, dearest, it is almost a profession to be an engineer."
"There's nothing undignified in labour. Trade'll do me."
- Malcolm MacDonald
The World from Rough Stones