Civil Engineering Quotes
The words of wisdom type
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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