Throughout history, there have been many notable engineers
and inventors who have changed the way we live through their creations
and innovations. As an engineer, you’ve likely taken inspiration along
the way from the works and words of some of the industry’s greats.
Here is a selection of 101 quotes about engineering, some
famous and some not-so, to make you laugh, inspire you and remind you of
the contribution than engineers have made in shaping the world we live
in today:
1. “Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.”
― Scott Adams
2. “One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
3. “But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not
tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful
dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”
― Hayao Miyazaki
4. “All we know about the new economic world tells us that
nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train
lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.”
― Richard Lamm
5. “I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the
thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make
practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain
as the goal, was unbearable to me.”
― Albert Einstein
6. “The problem in this business isn’t to keep people from stealing your ideas; it's making them steal your ideas!”
― Howard Aiken
7. “The fewer moving parts, the better." "Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering.”
― Christian Cantrell
8. “Engineering is not only study of 45 subjects but it is moral studies of intellectual life.”
― Prakhar Srivastav
9. “Are engineers better at business than business people?
It’s debatable. Business people certainly seems to have bigger houses,
drive fancier cars, wear nicer clothes and have better looking mates.
Engineers lack the time management skills to spend that kind of money.
They waste all their time inventing ways to make the most money in the
quickest, most efficient way possible. And then when they figure it out,
they optimize the process.”
― Raul Perez
10. “It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out
the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those
principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it's all
can openers.”
― Neal Stephenson
101 Engineering Quotes from the Minds of Innovators
Throughout
history, there have been many notable engineers and inventors who have
changed the way we live through their creations and innovations. As an
engineer, you’ve likely taken inspiration along the way from the works
and words of some of the industry’s greats.
Here is a selection of 101 quotes about engineering, some
famous and some not-so, to make you laugh, inspire you and remind you of
the contribution than engineers have made in shaping the world we live
in today:
1. “Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.”
― Scott Adams
2. “One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
3. “But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not
tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful
dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”
― Hayao Miyazaki
4. “All we know about the new economic world tells us that
nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train
lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.”
― Richard Lamm
5. “I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the
thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make
practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain
as the goal, was unbearable to me.”
― Albert Einstein
6. “The problem in this business isn’t to keep people from stealing your ideas; it's making them steal your ideas!”
― Howard Aiken
7. “The fewer moving parts, the better." "Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering.”
― Christian Cantrell
8. “Engineering is not only study of 45 subjects but it is moral studies of intellectual life.”
― Prakhar Srivastav
9. “Are engineers better at business than business people?
It’s debatable. Business people certainly seems to have bigger houses,
drive fancier cars, wear nicer clothes and have better looking mates.
Engineers lack the time management skills to spend that kind of money.
They waste all their time inventing ways to make the most money in the
quickest, most efficient way possible. And then when they figure it out,
they optimize the process.”
― Raul Perez
10. “It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out
the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those
principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it's all
can openers.”
― Neal Stephenson
11. “Math is my Passion. Engineering is my Profession.”
― Wilfred James Dolor
12 “Great triumphs of engineering genius—the locomotive,
the truss bridge, the steel rail— ... are rather invention than
engineering proper.”
― Arthur Mellen Wellington
13. “It is hardly surprising that the malodorous field of
garbology has not attained the popularity of rocket science, oil
exploration, or brain surgery.”
― Hans Y. Tammemagi
14. “First rule of engineering; beware prototypes. Along
with, avoid anything made by an engineer who doesn't have all his own
fingers.”
― Simon R. Green
15. “The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in
glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get
more parts on the table.”
― Steven Johnson
16. “[John] Kobak explained, 'The way you learn anything is
that something fails, and you figure out how not to have it fail
again.”
― Robert S. Arrighi
17. “There’s nothing I believe in more strongly than
getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better
tomorrow, for all humankind.”
― Bill Nye
18. “Engineering stimulates the mind. Kids get bored
easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things,
dismantle things, fix things. When the schools can offer that, you’ll
have an engineer for life.”
― Bruce Dickinson
19. “Projects we have completed demonstrate what we know - future projects decide what we will learn.”
― Dr Mohsin Tiwana
20. “I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept
things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing
problems.”
― Elon Musk
21. “A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A
good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few
ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
― Freeman Dyson
22. “To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the
pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice
as big as it needs to be.
― Unknown
23. “Manufacturing is more than just putting parts
together. It’s coming up with ideas, testing principles and perfecting
the engineering as well as final assembly."
― James Dyson
24. “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
25. “What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems… there’s no law of physics preventing them.”
― Michio Kaku
26. “ When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.”
― William Gibson
27. “The most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing.”
― Donald P Coduto
28. “A common mistake that people make when trying to
design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity
of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams
29. “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.
30. “ 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
31. “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
32. “ 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
33. “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
34. “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
35. “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
36. “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
37. “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
38. “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
39. “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)
40. “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
41. “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
42. “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
43. “I am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven
there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. 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
44. “[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
45. “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 privilege.”
― Herbert Hoover
46. “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
47. “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
48. “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
49. “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
50. “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
51. “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
52. “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
53. “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”
― Winston Churchill
54. “When engineers and quantity surveyors discuss aesthetics and architects study what cranes do we are on the right road.”
― Ove Arup
55. “The life work of the engineer consists in the
systematic application of natural forces and the systematic development
of natural resources in the service of man.”
― Harry Walter Tyler
56. “The scientist discovers a new type of material or energy and the engineer discovers a new use for it.”
― Gordon Lindsay Glegg
57. “Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty
does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well
as solid and long-lasting, structures? Aren’t the genuine functions of
strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony?”
― Gustave Eiffel
58. A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him.”
― Gordon Lindsay Glegg
59. “Engineering is not merely knowing and being
knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely
analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to
get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering
is practicing the art of the organising forces of technological change…
Engineers operate at the interface between science and society.”
― Gordon Stanley Brown
60. “Engineering is quite different from science.
Scientists try to understand nature. Engineers try to make things that
do not exist in nature. Engineers stress invention.”
― Yuan-Cheng Fung
61. “Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.”
― Thomas Tredgold
62. “Engineering is the professional and systematic
application of science to the efficient utilisation of natural resources
to produce wealth."
― Theodore Jesse Hoover
63. “Engineering or technology is the making of things that
did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things
that have long existed."
― David Billington
64. “I’ve never seen a job being done by a five-hundred-person engineering team that couldn’t be done better by fifty people.”
― C Gordon Bell
65. “No one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.”
― Henry Petroski
66. “Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.”
― Isaac Asimov
67. “Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been.”
― Theodore von Karman
68. “The story of civilisation is, in a sense, the story of
engineering - that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of
nature work for man’s good.”
― Lyon Sprague DeCamp
69. “Manufacturing, science and engineering are…incredibly
creative. I’d venture to say more so than creative advertising agencies
and things that are known as the creative industries.”
― Sir James Dyson
70. “Men build bridges and throw railroads across deserts,
and yet they contend successfully that the job of sewing on a button is
beyond them.”
― Heywood Broun
71. “The ideal engineer is a composite… He is not a
scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is not a sociologist or a
writer, but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of
these disciplines in solving engineering problems.”
― NW Dougherty
72. “Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving
energy, kinetic and potential, provided and stored up by nature for the
use of man. It is the business of engineering to utilise this energy to
the best advantage, so that there may be the least possible waste.”
― William A Smith
73. “The goal of science and engineering is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice.”
― Unknown
74. “Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the
best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it.”
― Sir Henry Royce
75. “The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history.”
― James Kip Finch
76. “You see, my ambition was not to confound the engineering world but simply to create a beautiful piece of art.”
― Kit Williams
77. “A good engineer thinks in reverse and asks himself
about the stylistic consequences of the components and systems he
proposes.”
― Helmut Jahn
78. “Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t
fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough
features yet.”
― Scott Adams
79. “An engineer is someone who washes his hands before going to the toilet.”
― Anon
80. “A theory may be so rich in descriptive possibilities that it can be made to fit any data.”
― Phillip Johnson-Laird
81. “Improvement makes strait roads: but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.”
― William Blake
82. “Knowing there is a structure, hidden or felt, to the random gives pleasure.”
― Cecil Balmond
83. “The engineer’s first problem in any design situation is to discover what the problem really is.”
― Unknown
84. “You never change things by fighting the existing
reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing
model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
85. “Gradually people come to you to buy surprise, and the
thing that’s nicest about it is that when people come to buy surprise, I
have no idea of what I’m going to give them either.”
― Peter Rice
86. “Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”
― Unknown
87. “Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
88. “Engineers have more words for screwing up than the Inuit have words for snow.”
― Pierce Nichols
89. “At that time (1909) the chief engineer was almost
always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of
eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.”
― Igor Sikorsky
90. “I guess the question I'm asked the most often is:
"When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how
did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how
you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were
sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on
a government contract.”
― John Glenn
91. “We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the
impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with
so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."
― Unknown
92. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupery
93. “I have not failed, but found 1000 ways to not make a light bulb.”
― Thomas Edison
94. “If not for the compulsions of engineers, mankind would
never have seen the wheel, settling instead for the trapezoid because
some Neanderthal in marketing convinced everybody it had great braking
ability.”
― Scott Adams
95. “The engineer is a mediator between the philosopher and
the working mechanic and, like an interpreter between two foreigners
must understand the language of both, hence the absolute necessity of
possessing both practical and theoretical knowledge.”
― Henry Palmer
96. “When I am working on a problem, I never think about
beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I
know it is wrong.”
― R Buckminster Fuller
97. “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks,
pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of
thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body
diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.”
― Neil Armstrong
98. "Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; it is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room; it is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there; usefulness comes from what is not."
― Excerpt from the Tao Te Ching
99. "The scientific man does not aim at an immediate
result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken
up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is
to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He
lives and labors and hopes.”
― Nikola Tesla
100. “There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as
there are for women doctors; but there’s always a demand for anyone who
can do a good piece of work.”
― Edith Clarke
101. “The world would be a better place if more engineers,
like me, hated technology. The stuff I design, if I’m successful, nobody
will ever notice. Things will just work, and be self-managing.”
― Radia Pearlman
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