Best 421 quotes in «engineering quotes» category

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

To every bushel of the powdered cement add one bushel of sand, mix them together and pass them through a sieve, then add a sufficient quantity of water to make it (by well mixing and working) about the consistency of a soft putty. It is then fit to use but should not be kept more than six or eight hours and should be thoroughly worked just before it is used.

To his and everybody else's way of thinking, you should build a house with your own hands before you start talking about being an engineer.

To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games. Nothing like saving the world.

To strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering -- that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead.

We are reaping the fruits of ten thousand, fifty thousand years of sowing of the fields of mind. And it is being dropped into our laps for us to create human-machine interfacing, control of genetic material, redefinition of social reality, re engineering of languages, revisioning of the planetary ecology, all these things fall upon us.

Tragically, some people are genetically more susceptible than others to agripoisons and industrial pollutants. Genetic engineering to correct these medical problems is a narrow (reductionistic) and instrumental (mechanistic) response to a problem that is fundamentally conceptual: namely, our attitude toward life and our mistreatment of the Earth, plants, and animals-and ourselves in the process.

Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs.

Unless you took courses in architecture, engineering, or pre-med, the rest of your liberal arts education hardly prepares you for life as the business warrior and champion you envision yourself to be.

We are being colonised without New Zealanders having some say in the numbers of people coming in and where they are coming from. This is a deliberate policy of ethnic engineering and re-population.

We are intelligent atoms. We are intelligent organic structures. We can change who we are. We can heal ourselves. With genetic engineering, we are considering changing the physiological structure of the body.

We can and should place special emphasis on developing in our youth constructive incentives — a love of science, engineering, and math, so that they will want to take advanced scientific courses and thereby help meet the needs of our times.

To say that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer.

To succeed at re-engineering, you have to be a missionary, a motivator, and a leg breaker.

Trade has always existed, but we used to defend our strategic interests. Could you imagine the United States allowing French engineering giant Alstom to purchase General Electric? I don't think so.

Very few people can communicate with one another. The only language that's not subject to interpretation is mathematics, chemistry, basic science, engineering principles, and applied agriculture. But other than that, many systems today are subject to interpretation.

What made Manhattan Manhattan was the underground infrastructure, that engineering marvel.

We don’t care about what you did yesterday—we care about what you’re going to do tomorrow.

We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease.

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

We may simply not be wise enough to do some of the kinds of engineering things that people are talking about doing.

What is innovation if not our ticket to every business interest in the world? Its the ticket to solving the worlds problems - the energy problems, the pollution problems, the global warming problems. If it isnt for science and engineering, how will we compete in the new world?

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 . . .

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.

… 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”.

With genetic engineering, we will be able to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race. But it will be a slow process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the effect of changes to the genetic code.

What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems... there's no law of physics preventing them.

When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — Barack Obama charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.

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.

While political and cultural factors are important as explanations for differences in national technology policy and industrial practices, emergent trends in science, engineering and management are leading to new paradigms for high-technology innovation in both Japan and the United States.

With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species may literally collapse.

When Chuck House wanted to develop the oscilloscope for HP, David Packard told him to abandon the project. Chuck went on "vacation" and came back with $2 million in orders. Packard later gave him an award inscribed with an accolade for "extraordinary contempt and defiance beyond the normal call of engineering.

When wireless is fully applied the earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts.

With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics , the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.

Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.

You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.

You can be creative in anything - in math, science, engineering, philosophy - as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.

You had to make a camera look like it's traveling at 300 mph, but you couldn't make it actually travel at 300 mph so you had to slow everything down and build devices to do that. So you were constantly engineering.

You have the insanity that is geo-engineering which is a case in which you say the planet is heating up. Let's spray some aerosol and cool it down.

You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.

Ask Gandhi, and eye for an eye makes us both blind.....ask an engineer, and the numbers don't lie - the first to strike wins.

As electrical energy can create mechanical vibrations (perceived as sound by the human ear), so in turn can mechanical vibrations create electrical energy, such as the previously mentioned ball lightning. It could be theorized, therefore, that with the Earth being a source for mechanical vibration, or sound, and the vibrations being of a usable amplitude and frequency, then the Earth's vibrations could be a source of energy that we could tap into. Moreover, if we were to discover that a structure with a certain shape, such as a pyramid, was able to effectively act as a resonator for the vibrations coming from within the Earth, then we would have a reliable and inexpensive source of energy.

A pessimist says the glass is half empty, an optimist says the glass is half full, and an engineer says the glass is too big.

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.

Bad design with good materials may give you the designed fatigue life, but a good design with bad materials will never give you the designed fatigue life.

A societal revolution is politically organic in nature. It can't be engineered. It has to be evolved.

As we look around the world, especially in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, the west coast of Italy, Peru, and Bolivia, there are stone structures and the remains of others which don't easily fit into the standard picture of history. The pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Puma Punku in Bolivia, and the great megalithic wall of Sachsayhuaman in Peru are but three examples of astonishingly well-made stone works which modern engineers, stone masons, and other experts puzzle over. Conventional academics in general date these structures well within the standard timeline of so-called civilization. The generally prescribed creation date of the three pyramids of Giza is about 2500 BC, Puma Punku is alleged to have been constructed around 600 AD, and Sachsayhuaman approximately 1200 to 1400 AD. However, what intrigues engineers, architects, stone masons, and other professionals is the extreme precision of the work, often in very hard stone, which many archaeologists insist was usually achieved using bronze and or copper chisels, wooden measuring devices, and stone hammers.

Birds fly more efficiently than aeroplanes. Nature is the superior engineer.

Conjugation of the irregular verb “to design”: I create, You interfere, He gets in the way. We cooperate, You obstruct, They conspire.

Engineering is defining and following datasheets.If it doesn't work then use common sense.