Quotes about engineer
page 4

“Geometry is that of mathematical science which is devoted to consideration of form and size, and may be said to be the best and surest guide to study of all sciences in which ideas of dimension or space are involved. Almost all the knowledge required by navigators, architects, surveyors, engineers, and opticians, in their respective occupations, is deduced from geometry and branches of mathematics. All works of art constructed according to the rules which geometry involves; and we find the same laws observed in the works of nature. The study of mathematics, generally, is also of great importance in cultivating habits of exact reasoning; and in this respect it forms a useful auxiliary to logic.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) (1802–1871) Scottish publisher and writer

Robert Chambers, Chambers's Information for the People (1875) Vol. 2 https://books.google.com/books?id=vNpTAAAAYAAJ

Law, Art, Mathematics, Idea

“Sending large numbers of people to explore and settle Mars in the decades ahead isn't inevitable, but it is entirely possible. The biggest challenge isn't the engineering and spacecraft, however difficult they may be. Instead, it's making sure that a sustained Mars campaign proceeds as a national priority, and that will happen only if the American people are behind it. We have the opportunity now to make this happen. We might not be so fortunate in the future.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Page 13 Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007), Foreword to Marc Kaufman's Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission https://books.google.com/books/about/Mars_Up_Close.html?ido6XaCwAAQBAJ&hlen. National Geographic. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.

People, Future

“When I looked at the science of engineering and saw that it had disappeared after its ancient heritage, that its masters have perished, and that their memories are now forgotten, I worked my wits and thoughts in secrecy about philosophical shapes and figures, which could move the mind, with effort, from nothingness to being and from idleness to motion. And I arranged these shapes one by one in drawings and explained them.”

Al-Muradi

Al-Muradi, The Book of Secrets in the Results of Ideas, 11th century; Translated and cited at leonardo3.net/bookofsecrets/index http://www.leonardo3.net/bookofsecrets/index_eng.html, 2015

Effort, Memory, Science, Drawing

“Engineers speak of a “control loop,” in which the “man in the loop” is the problematical element. This is the human component in a series of sequentially interacting pieces of equipment that control or adjust a function. But when the pilot is suddenly and unexpectedly brought into the control loop (in other words, participates in decision making) as a result of (inevitable) equipment failure, he is disoriented. Long periods of passive monitoring make one unprepared to act in emergencies. The sudden appearance of several alarms, all there for safety reasons, leads to disorientation.”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 132

Failure, Decision, Appearance

“Organisations are technical instruments; designed as means to definite goals… they are expendable. Institutions… may be partly engineered, but they have also a “natural” dimension. They are the products of interaction and adaptation; they become the receptacles of group idealism; they are less readily expendable.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Philip Selznick, quoted in Charles Perrow (1960, p.4), as cited in: Owen A. Jones. The Sources of Goal Incongruence in a Public Service Network. 2013. p. 35-36

Nature

“I want to be the poster girl for engineers and computer nerds.”

Alessandra Torresani (1987) American actress

Hugh Hart Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/01/alessandra-torresani/all/1 Alessandra Torresani Gets Inside Caprica’s Prime Cylon (January 21, 2010).

Girl

“A physician, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world." The civil engineer interrupted, and said, "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world."”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?"
Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 2

God, Books, World, Smile

“What is a bow and arrow?
It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war.
It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering.
It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb.
It is a symbol of a way of life.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 7, “Aesop” (p. 210)

Life, War, Way

“The only generally agreed upon definition of mathematics is "Mathematics is what mathematicians do." […]
In the face of this difficulty [of defining "computer science"] many people, including myself at times, feel that we should ignore the discussion and get on with doing it. But as George Forsythe points out so well in a recent article*, it does matter what people in Washington D. C. think computer science is. According to him, they tend to feel that it is a part of applied mathematics and therefore turn to the mathematicians for advice in the granting of funds. And it is not greatly different elsewhere; in both industry and the universities you can often still see traces of where computing first started, whether in electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, or even business. Evidently the picture which people have of a subject can significantly affect its subsequent development. Therefore, although we cannot hope to settle the question definitively, we need frequently to examine and to air our views on what our subject is and should become.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Hamming cites Forsythe, G.E., "What to do until the computer scientist comes", Am. Math. Monthly 75 (5), May 1968, p. 454-461.
One Man's View of Computer Science (1969)

People, Hope, Feeling, Mathematics

“To me politics is just a matter of getting the engineering right. If you have a machine which functions properly without much attention, then it’s obviously a good machine. That’s what politics should be about. And if the machine has simple working parts which any layman can understand, then it’s, as it were, your democratic machine. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Crazy,” said Makhno, and scratched his nose.
“What?”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“You’re not right or wrong. You’re crazy.”
Book 2, Chapter 1 “The Camp on Rishiri” (p. 342)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

Understanding, Parting

“Since the lot of the common man had traditionally been one of unrelenting hardship, engineers looked upon their works as man’s “redeemer from despairing drudgery and burdensome labor.” Once the common man was released from drudgery, the engineers reasoned, he would inevitably become educated, cultured and ennobled. … Next, elevation of the common man would tend to make all men more nearly equal, thus making the engineer an agent in the realization of the democratic dream, “an apostle of democracy,” as one engineer orator put it in 1905. … “We are the priests of a new epoch,” an engineering leader told his colleagues in 1895, “without superstitions.””

Samuel C. Florman (1925) American writer and civil engineer

Source: The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (1976), pp. 6-7

Men, Education, Dreams, Democracy

“Private Capitalism makes a steam engine; State Capitalism makes pyramids.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

As quoted in “Frank Chodorov: Champion of Liberty,” Aaron Steelman, FEE, (Foundation for Economic Education), (December 1, 1996) https://fee.org/articles/frank-chodorov-champion-of-liberty/

“I came to MIT from Harvard University, where I was a lecturer. I had been at the Harvard Psychoacoustic Laboratory during World War II and stayed on at Harvard as a lecturer, mainly doing research, but also a little bit of teaching—statistics and physiological psychology—subjects like that.
Then there came a time that I thought that I had better go pay attention to my career. I had just been having a marvelous time there. I am not a good looker for jobs; I just came to the nearest place I could, which was in our city. I arranged to come down here and start up a psychology section, which we hoped would eventually become a psychology department. For the purposes of having a base of some kind I was in the Electrical Engineering Department. I even taught a little bit of electrical engineering.
I fell in love with the summer study process that MIT had. They had one on undersea warfare and overseas transport—a thing called Project Hartwell. I really liked that. It was getting physicists, mathematicians—everybody who could contribute—to work very intensively for a period of two or three months. After Hartwell there was a project called Project Charles, which was actually two years long (two summers and the time in between). It was on air defense. I was a member of that study. They needed one psychologist and 20 physicists. That led to the creation of the Lincoln Laboratory. It got started immediately as the applied section of the Research Laboratory for Electronics, which was already a growing concern at MIT.”

J. C. R. Licklider (1915–1990) American psychologist and computer scientist

Licklider in: " An Interview with J. C. R. LICKLIDER http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107436/1/oh150jcl.pdf" conducted by William Aspray and Arthur Norberg on 28 October 1988, Cambridge, MA.

Love, War, World, Hope

“It (i. e., agriculture) was the most profound revolution in hominid living since Homo erectus had left the forest and committed themselves to the savannah. Compared to this phase shift, the advances of the future—even genetic engineering—were details. There would never be so significant a change again, not until humans themselves disappeared from the planet.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 14 “The Swarming People” section II (p. 456)

Change, Future

“Were a language ever completely "grammatical" it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.”

Edward Sapir (1884–1939) American linguist and anthropologist

Source: Language (1921), p. 39

Perfection

“Hack has become a sort of all-encompassing term, when in fact some of this was social engineering, some of this was good old-fashioned regular ‘there’s a hole, I’m going to walk through it’,” said Leiderman. “If you left your front door open people wouldn’t really call it a break-in. To some extent Stratfor were unsecure to the point where it was like their front door was open and Mr Hammond allegedly, with some others, walked right in, and people are calling it a hack. “As far as I’m aware, nothing was really hacked in the classic sense,” he added.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

From Computing Magazine, UK. Analysis: a case of government versus hacktivism http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/analysis/2230770/analysis-a-case-of-government-versus-hacktivism#ixzz2EzJrtLFS

People, Fashion, Sense

“There is no need for him to call on me. I am not about to be a party to anything having to do with the law that is going to destroy individual freedom and liberty in this country. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy our free enterprise system. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy neighborhood schools. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy the rights of private property. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that destroys your right --and my right -- to choose my neighbors -- or to sell my house to whomever I choose. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that destroys the labor seniority system. I am having nothing to do with this so-called civil rights bill. The liberal left-wingers have passed it. Now let them employ some pinknik social engineers in Washington, D. C., to figure out what to do with it.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

Speech http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1951-/speech-by-george-c-wallace-the-civil-rights-movement-fraud-sham-and-hoax-1964-.php (4 July 1964) 1960s

School, Law, Freedom, Housing

“Engineers, scientists, and statisticians have, until recently, been the groups chiefly interested in activity called quality control. These technologists have been primarily concerned with the technical methods which have become associated with the subject. They have applied these methods to a number of industrial quality problems.
Excellent results in improving quality and in reducing costs are now being reported from these applications. These reports have generated growing interest by industrial managers in the potentialities of quality control as a business method.
What, management is asking, is meant by the term "quality control"? Is there anything really new about it? What are the quality-control activities? What is the proper organization for quality control? How much does the program cost, and what benefits can result from it? Is quality control good only for mass production? May it be useful in a job shop as well? How do statistical methods fit into the quality-control pattern? What does quality control mean to the foreman, to the design engineer, to the salesman? How is quality control introduced to a company?”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. vii; Preface: lead paragraph

Business, Problem

“The phenomenon of the production of motion by heat has not been considered from a sufficiently general point of view. We have considered it only in machines… [for which] the phenomenon is… incomplete. It becomes difficult to recognize its principles and study its laws. …[T]he principle of the production of motion by heat… must be considered independently of any mechanism or… particular agent. It is necessary to establish principles applicable not only to steam-engines but to all imaginable heat-engines, whatever the working substance and whatever the method by which it is operated.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Law, Imagination, Study

“We owe nothing in our origins from Adam Smith, Ricardo, Pareto, Proudhon, Bakunin, Karl Marx, Lenin, or any of the rest of the political philosophies. We do owe a debt to J. Willard Gibbs, Nikola Tesla, Steinmetz, Mac and John Rusk, and a thousand other American chemists, engineers, scientists, and technologists.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Howard Scott interviewed at Radio station KYW, Cleveland Interview with Howard Scott, 19 November 1964. Transcript online at technocracyincorporated.org, 2006.

“The notes of this music were the last thing I heard before I went off the poop and felt myself going headlong into the icy water with the engines and machinery buzzing in my ears.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), pp. 151-152

Music, Water

“In fact, the science of thermodynamics began with an analysis, by the great engineer Sadi Carnot, of the problem of how to build the best and most efficient engine, and this constitutes one of the few famous cases in which engineering has contributed to fundamental physical theory. Another example that comes to mind is the more recent analysis of information theory by Claude Shannon. These two analyses, incidentally, turn out to be closely related.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 44, "The Laws of Thermodynamics"; section 44-1, "Heat engines; the first law"; p. 44-2
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Problem, Science

“Engineering does not require science. Science helps a lot but people built perfectly good brick walls long before they knew why cement works.”

Alan Cox (1968) British computer programmer

Re: Coding style - a non-issue http://lkml.org/lkml/2001/12/1/110.

People, Science, Help

“Disgusting as he usually was, on rare occasions he showed flashes of stagnant intelligence. But his brain was so rotted with drink and dissolute living that whenever he put it to work it behaved like an old engine that had gone haywire from being dipped in lard.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

Intelligence, Drink

“A scientist studies what is, whereas an engineer creates what never was.”

Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963) Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer and physicist

Theoretical foundations for decision making in engineering design https://www.nap.edu/read/10566/chapter/2 (National Academy Press, 2001)

Study

“You got through a day and wondered what your reward was. It soon became evident the prize was you got to withstand tomorrow too. You got through it, hour by long hour, but at the end you looked up without much expectation. You had begun the understand the score. Sure enough: today's prize was the same. Outwardly calm, but with a scream building like the sound of a long-forgotten steam engine in the back corner of a basement, you got through that tomorrow too, and a flat hardpan of further tomorrows after that. You got through enough of then to realize you'd been had, that there aren't tomorrows after all but the wretched stretch of an endless today. What can you do? Rebellion gets you nowhere.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 21

Understanding

“The marketing people don't care about the elegance and perfection that impresses the engineers' peers. They think engineers are impractical cuckoos who would just as soon bankrupt the company by pursuing perfectionist pipe dreams.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), p. 159.

People, Dreams, Thinking, Perfection

“Administration is both social engineering and applied psychology. It is apparatus and mechanics, incentives and human nature. Let no one think it is merely the former. Nowhere is the need for psychology greater than in the organization, direction, and inspiration of men working in large groups. Outstanding administrative results are produced by spirit, morale, atmosphere; these, in turn, are the product of psychological mainsprings and invigorating incentives. As Benjamin Lippincott has recognized, both governmental and business administration resolve fundamentally into the role played by effective incentives.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: "The Study of Administration." 1937, p. 30

Men, Business, Nature, Thinking

“Lulu made most of his telephone calls. He made this one himself, on a special line that didn't pass through her desk. It went straight from his office to the War Department. Men checked twice a day to make sure the damnyankees didn't tap it. It rang only once before the Chief of the General Staff picked it up. "Forrest speaking." "Featherston," Jake said, and then, "Blackbeard." He hung up. There. It was done. The die was cast. Whatever was going to happen would happen… starting tomorrow morning, early tomorrow morning. Summer had just come in. Jake worked through the rest of June 21. He ate supper, then went right on working through the night. Lulu brought him cup after cup of coffee. After a while, yawning, she went home to bed. He worked on, behind blackout curtains that kept light from leaking out of the Gray House and showing where it was from the air. June 21 passed through to June 22. All that coffee made Jake's eart thud and soured his stomach. He gulped a Bromo-Seltzer and went on. At a quarter past three, the drone of airplane engines and the thunder of distant artillery- not distant enough; damn those Yankee robbers!”

Harry Turtledove book American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

made him whoop for sheer glee. He'd waited so long. Now his day was here.
Source: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003), p. 534.

Men, War, Home, Coffee

“An engineering science aims to organize the design principles used in engineering practice into a discipline and thus to exhibit the similarities between different areas of engineering practice and to emphasize the power of fundamental concepts. In short, an engineering science is predominated by theoretical analysis and very often uses the tool of advanced mathematics.”

Qian Xuesen (1911–2009) Chinese rocket scientist

Source: Engineering cybernetics, (1954), p. vii

Mathematics, Science

“The term division of labor has, from long usage, become associated in the public mind with manual processes. But productive labor is, in general, both manual and mental and just as there may be division of manual labor so there may be division of mental labor or division of thought. Modern productive methods tend constantly to separate mental labor from manual labor and then to subdivide each into smaller and smaller parts. The subdivision of manual labor is greatly furthered, as has been seen, by the extended use of tools. Subdivision of mental labor on the other hand is hastened by an increase in the amount of knowledge and mental development necessary to successfully perform the work in hand. Thus the mental labor of designing machinery is performed largely apart from the actual production; and this mental labor has become very closely specialized as the scientific basis of engineering has grown. This process of subdivision is greatly hastened in both manual and mental operations by increased quantity since this, of itself, enables the manager to avail himself of the inherent advantages of division of labor already discussed.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 48

Knowledge, Parting

“Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Protecting Marriage From Judicial Tyranny
LewRockwell.com
2004-07-22
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul197.html
2000s, 2001-2005

Hostility, Marriage, People

“The engineer must be able not only to design, but to execute. A draftsman may be able to design, but unless he is able to execute his designs to successful operation he cannot be classed as an engineer. The production engineer must be able to execute his work as he has planned it. This requires two qualifications in addition to technical engineering ability: He must know men, and he must have creative ability in applying good statistical, accounting, and " system" methods to any particular production work he may undertake.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

Source: "Industrial Engineering," 1905, p. 67

Men, Success

“In their broad Augustan day, Scottish miners were legally still serfs, just as miners in Greece had always been slaves; and neither civilization thought anything amiss. …It was the engine, it was the horsepower which created consideration for the horse; and the Industrial Revolution which created our sensibility.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Horse

“In Braque and Gris, they seemed to have idea of the organization beforehand in their mind. With Bonnard, he is organizing in front of you. You can tell in Leger just when he discovered how to make it like an engine.... What's wrong with that? You see it in Barney (=Barnett Newman) too, that he knows what a painting should be. He paints as he thinks painting should be, which is pretty heroic..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Evergreen Review, 1958

Idea, Thinking, Painting

“As Akins observes, it is not the point of our sensory systems that they should detect "basic" or "natural" properties of the environment, but that they should serve our "narcissistic" purposes in staying alive; nature doesn't build epistemic engines.”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

citing Kathleen Akins. "On Piranhas, Narcissism and Mental Representations: An Essay on Intentionality and Naturalism" (1989)
Consciousness Explained (1991)

Nature

“My estimate of American character has improved, contrary to my expectations, by this visit…I find myself in love with their intelligence, their sincerity, and the decorous self-respect that actuates all classes. The very genius of activity seems to have found its fit abode in the souls of this restless and energetic race. They have not, ‘tis true, the force of Englishmen in personal weight or strength, but they have compensated for this deficiency by quickening the momentum of their enterprises. All is in favour of celerity of action and the saving of time. Speed, speed, speed, is the motto that is stamped in the form of their ships and steamboats, in the breed of their horses, and the light construction of their wagons and carts: and in the ten thousand contrivances that are met with here, whether for the abridging of the labour of months or minutes, whether a high-pressure engine or a patent boot-jack. All is done in pursuit of one common object, the economy of time.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 39-40.
1830s

Love, Soul, Intelligence, Light

“It has been said that an engineer is a man who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound; if that be so, we were certainly engineers.”

Nevil Shute (1899–1960) British racing driver

Of the R100 engineers
Slide Rule, p. 66

Fools

“Windows 95 and MacOS are products, contrived by engineers in the service of specific companies. Unix, by contrast, is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"The Oral Tradition"
In the Beginning... was the Command Line (1999)

History

“When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

As quoted in The School as a Home for the Mind : Creating Mindful Curriculum, Instruction, and Dialogue (2007) by Arthur L. Costa, p. 91

Life, Business, Training

“What humans can't engineer, evolution can.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

“Trade unions up to a certain point have been recognised now as organs for good. They are the only means by which workmen can protect themselves from the tyranny of those who employ them. But the moment that trade unions become tyrants in their turn, they are engines for evil: they have no right to prevent people from working on any terms that they choose.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

Lyons & Sons v. Wilkins (1896), 74 L. T. Rep. (N. S.) 364. Compare Mogul Steamship Co. v. MacGregor, Gow, & Co., 66 L. T. Rep. (N. S.) 1; Temperton v. Russell and others, 69 L. T. Rep. (N. S.) 78.

People, Evil

“Culture is best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns — customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters — as has, by and large, been the case up to now, but as a set of control mechanisms — plans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers call “programs”) — for the governing of behavior.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 44

Behavior

“It filled me with dread – she had a reputation for being difficult. She had been headlining on the Royal Command performance the night before we were due to start. She arrived and swept through reception looking like thunder and disappeared into the studio. I thought, ‘I’m the first here, I’d better go in and introduce myself’. I walked in and I said: ‘Morning Miss Bassey, my name is Martin Rushent and I’m going to be your new engineer and co-producer’. She threw a mic stand at me. She told me to get out. She apologised afterwards, I hasten to add.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

[Serck, Linda, Legendary producer Martin Rushent, 2009, http://www.getreading.co.uk/entertainment/music/s/2061462_legendary_producer_martin_rushent, Get Reading, 6 June 2011]

Night

“She put snow on the mountain's / peak for me and took the Gallup Poll of my imagination. / She is both the V-Hold and popular fiction of my life. I write / her letters daily, which I'm then prompted to discard. She / engineered several corporate mergers until I couldn't resist / temptation.”

Carson Cistulli (1979) American poet and writer

A Century of Enthusiasm (2007)

Life, Imagination, Mountain

“I looked down on a quilt of clouds, bordered on the horizon by the blood-orange streaks of the setting sun. As the steady hum of the engine drowned out the chatter around me, I realized that I would probably be thinking about the implications of Watergate for the rest of my life. For the country, and for me it had been a significant point in time.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 263
At That Point in Time, Impact of Watergate

Life, Thinking, Time, Sun

“Hey porter! Hey porter!
Would you tell me the time?
How much longer will it be till we cross that Mason Dixon Line?
At daylight would ya tell that engineer to slow it down?
Or better still, just stop the train,
Cause I wanna look around.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Hey, Porter
Song lyrics, Now Here's Johnny Cash (1961)

Time, Training

“Paying attention to what’s happened historically actually helps give you some faith that you are going to find a solution. Faith isn’t a surrogate for engineering competence, but it can certainly help fuel the belief that you’re going to find a solution. And that’s important.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

Time: "Apple Design Chief Jonathan Ive on the iPhone X: We Had to Solve ‘Extraordinarily Complex Problems’" http://time.com/5025887/apple-jony-ive-iphone-x/ (16 November 2017)

Faith, Help

“I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

2011-05-15 interview on * Meet the Press
2011-05-15
NBC, quoted in * Gingrich Calls GOP Budget 'Right Wing Social Engineering'
PBS
2011-05-16
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/05/gingrich-keeps-ryan-budget-at-arms-length.html
2011-05-28
2010s

Way, Thinking, Change

“Undershaft: You have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it wont scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions. Whats the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

World, Religion, Loss

“He came back to England convinced that Rhodes and his fellow mining capitalists had engineered the war in order to removed the leaders of the Boer republics who stood in the way of the rationalisation of the black labour supply in the gold mines.”

Peter Cain (1958) figure skater

Source: J. A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study: A Centennial Retrospective (2002), p. 9

War, Way

“This law (regarding the theoretical efficiency of heat engines by Mr. Joule), and the law of the maximum efficiency of heat engines, are particular cases of a general law which regulates all transformation of energy, and is the basis of the Science of Energetics.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

Manual of Applied Mechanics, (1858) London and Glasgow : Richard Griffin and Company, p. 630

Law, Science

“The moment when the scientists became engineers was a historical turning point.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 8, The End of Nature, p. 152.

“I was a kind of a one-man army. I could solder circuits together, I could turn out things on the lathe, I could work with rockets and balloons. I'm a kind of a hybrid between an engineer and a physicist and astronomer.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On his early career, "Grounded in Space Science", Interview with Rushworth M. Kidder, The Christian Science Monitor, page 14, December 22, 1989.

“All this (the early excitement of Cybernetics) is now history, and in the decade which elapsed since these early baby steps of interdisciplinary communication, many more threads were picked up and interwoven into a remarkable tapestry of knowledge and endeavour: Bionics. It is good omen that at the right time the right name was found. For, bionics extends a great invitation to all who are willing not to stop at the investigation of a particular function or its realization, but to go on and to seek the universal signiﬁcance of these functions in living or artiﬁcial organisms.
The reader who goes through the following papers which constitute the transactions of the ﬁrst symposium held under the name Bionics will be surprised by the multitude of astonishing and unforeseen connections between concepts he believed to be familiar with. For instance, a couple of years ago, who would have thought to relate the reliability problem to multi-valued logics; or, who would have thought that integral or differential geometry would serve as an adequate tool in the theory of abstraction? It is hard to say in all these cases who was teaching whom: The life-sciences the engineering sciences, or vice versa? And rightly so, for it guarantees optimal information ﬂow, and everybody gains…”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

Von Foerster (1960) as cited in Peter M. Asaro (2007). "Heinz von Foerster and the Bio-Computing Movements of the 1960s," http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20HVF%26BCL.pdf 1960s

Life, History, Communication, Optimism

“Software Engineering Economics is an invaluable guide to determining software costs, applying the fundamental concepts of microeconomics to software engineering, and utilizing economic analysis in software engineering decision making.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Barry W. Boehm (1981) Software engineering economics. Abstract.

Decision

“It is hard to say whether increasing complexity is the cause or the effect of man's effort to cope with his expanding environment. In either case a central feature of the trend has been the development of large and very complex systems which tie together modern society. These systems include abstract or non-physical systems, such as government and the economic system. They also include large physical systems like pipe line and power distribution systems, transportation and electrical communication systems. The growth of these systems has increased the need not only for over-all planning, but also for long-range development of the systems. This need has induced increased interest in the methods by which efficient planning and design can be accomplished in complex situations where no one scientific discipline can account for all the factors. Two similar disciplines which emerged about the time of World War II to cope with these problems are called systems engineering and operations research.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: A methodology for systems engineering, 1962, p. 5: About the evolution of systems engineering; Partly cited in: Allen B. Rosenstein (1965) " Systems engineering and Modern Engineering Design http://books.google.com/books?id=HDp9ReqM314C&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false"

War, World, Communication, Problem

“I reckon that the Bailey Bridge and the bulldozer were the greatest advances in military engineering in the years between World War I and World War II.”

Christopher Vokes (1904–1985) Canadian general

My Service Before The War, p. 56
Vokes - My Story (1985)

War, World

“If all the theories pertinent to systems engineering could be discussed within a common framework by means of a standard set of nomenclature and definitions, many separate courses might not be required.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Source: A Mathematical Theory of Systems Engineering (1967), p. vi; cited in: Jack Murph Pollin (1969) Theoretical Foundations for Analysis of Teleological Systems. p. 63.

“A new concept and a new method were needed. The concept from the engineering standpoint is the evolution of the engineering scientist, i. e., the scientific generalist who maintains a broad outlook. The method is that of the team approach. On large-scale-system problems, teams of scientists and engineers, generalists as well as specialists, exert their joint efforts to find a solution and physically realize it.
We are led to the concept of the system-design team, a small group of engineers or scientists, to lead a large project and organize the system effort. Such men have been variously called engineering scientists, system engineers, system analysts, or large-scale-system designers. The technique has been variously called the systems approach or the team development method. It is toward this man and his teammates that these discussions are directed. With the realization that not enough can be learned in all the required fields to make him a specialist, enough is introduced to make him aware of the language and problems of the specialist. This generalist is a new quantity in the engineering world, and his education must be begun.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: System Engineering (1957), p. 8

Men, World, Education, Problem

“It is possible that the major collaboration between economists and engineers is still to come, in the greater use of physical analogues and computers of the analogue type to avoid the difficulties of calculation. Apart from their major use as possible tools for economic regulation, physical analogues have a subsidiary use, for there are students of economics, as there are many students of engineering, who can better understand the significance of the somewhat formidable mathematics that tends to be used in this field, if they can first acquaint themselves with the types of behaviour in question as exhibited by physical objects that can be seen, felt, handled and experimented with. It may also be suggested that economists may find that what they have to say about economic policy will be very readily assimilated by one group of attentive pupils, namely the scientists, engineers and technicians of industry, if explanatory notions can be drawn from the theory of automatic control, which is now part of a normal engineering education. The aim of this essay has been to give explanations of system behaviour, and some approaches to its analysis, using geometrical construction and physical analogy where possible to clarify the implications of the more usual formal algebraic approach.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. 2

Education, Mathematics, Understanding, Question

“The biggest misfortune in human history is the invention of the combustion engine. Cars and airplanes diminish the world, rob it of all its diversity. Young men who meet me want to know how they could do what I've done. But all they can be is tourists now.”

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) British explorer

Book Report by David Streitfeld https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1999/06/06/book-report/664d575b-8615-4d17-9275-dd7eb11de8bd/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.213c896c1ac0. The Washington Post. 6 June 1999.

Men, World, Cars, History

“Utopism is the forerunner of all modem conceptions concerning social policy, social organization, and social peace. All the art of social engineering could not place one stone upon another in the social edifice if the broad outlines of the system as an idea had not been projected long before, and if the seeds of the motivating ideals had not early been sowed in the hearts of men.”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 178

Men, Peace, Art, Motivation

“Up to this time, as I believe, slavery had been let alone, as it claimed to be, in good faith. Up to this time it is clear enough in our history that there was no general perception of the terrible truth that slavery was a system aggressive in its very nature, and necessarily destructive of Constitutional rights and liberties. Up to this time there had been a general blindness to the fact that, under the plea, which was allowed, that it was a local and State institution, slavery had acquired an absolute national supremacy, and if not checked would presently declare itself in national law as the national policy. I think that the eyes of the people were opened rather by the frank statements and legislative action in Congress of the slave party; by the speeches of Mr. Calhoun, filtered through lesser minds and mouths than his; at last by the events in Kansas forcing every man to consider whether, while we had let slavery alone, it had also let us alone; and forcing him to see that its hand was already upon the throat of freedom in this country. I think that by the cuts of the slave party, not by the words of the technical abolitionists, the country was at last aroused. The moral wrong and the political despotism of the system were at last perceived, and a reconstruction of political parties was inevitable. For in human society, while the individual conscience is the steam or motive power, political methods are the engine and the wheels by which progress is effected and secured.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People, Truth, Faith, Law

“We’ve become a race of engineers. What we never seem to understand is that after it’s time to railroad, there’s time to build a beautiful railroad. The state of the art has advanced enough; we can afford to pay a small penalty in efficiency.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 17 (p. 167)

Penalty, Beauty, Art, Understanding

“I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating-machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice, he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Tribune Rally, 29 September 1954, in response to Clement Attlee's wish for a non-emotional response to German rearmament. The remark 'desiccated calculating-machine' is often taken as a Bevan jibe against Hugh Gaitskell who became Labour Party leader the following year.
1950s

Education, Way, Suffering

“I guess I don’t subscribe to the twee school. I remember trying to lose our copy of Thomas the Tank Engine before I had to read it again. Life is a more dimensional and interesting affair than vestigially Victorian notions of childhood. I was trying to make something substantial, something to be read and reread.”

Art Spiegelman (1948) cartoonist from the United States

On his book Jack and the Box, as quoted in "Smart Art : Spiegelman doesn’t dumb down for kids" by Alexandra Zissu in New York Magazine (16 November 2008) http://nymag.com/family/kids/52136/.

Life, School, Reading, Childhood

“I remember those days hanging out
At the village green
Engineer boots, leather jackets
And tight blue jeans
Drop a dime in the box play the
Song about New Orleans
Cold beer, hot lights
My sweet romantic teenage nights.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Beer, Light, Night, Box

“Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

Life, Death, Men, War

“Euclid's work will live long after all the text books of the present day are superseded and forgotten. It is one of the noblest monuments of antiquity; no mathematician worthy of the name can afford not to know Euclid, the real Euclid as distinct from any revised or rewritten versions which will serve for schoolboys or engineers. And, to know Euclid, it is necessary to know his language, and, so far as it can be traced, the history of the "elements" which he collected in his immortal work.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Books, History

“The idea of a terrorist attack that assaults innocent human beings in a building or a mall or a restaurant is bad enough. Yet the terrorist mind that looks at a passenger plane and sees the fuel and the intensity of the blast, and sees the rocket engines that will carry it into the heart of destruction like a cruise missile, but who does not see the humanity of one single soul on that airplane, is the chilling truth of what we're up against.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Black America's Political Action Committee (BAMPAC), September 25, 2001. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/01_09_25bampac.htm. 2009

Truth, Soul, Idea, Heart

“And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot of the workers by the application of science to industry — what a sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you! You devote the useful energy of your mind to working out the scheme of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices and burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind together two countries which nature has separated. But once at work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this dark tunnel — you see others of them returning home carrying with them, maybe, a few pence, and the undoubted seeds of consumption; you see human corpses — the results of a groveling greed — as landmarks along each yard of your road; and, when the railroad is finished, you see, lastly, that it becomes the highway for the artillery of an invading army…”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Sadness, Dreams, Disappointment, Home

“The analysis of engineering systems and the understanding of economic structure have advanced since then, and the time is now more ripe to bring these topics into a potentially fruitful marriage.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. v

Marriage, Understanding, Time

“Politics is a kind of engineering isn't it. With people as your raw material.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Nine, Part II, Mondaugen

People

“If we look at the discipline of software engineering, we see that the microeconomics branch of economics deals more with the types of decisions we need to make as software engineers or managers.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: Software engineering economics. (1984), p. 4

Decision

“The belief that science destroys culture is sometimes supported by historical statements that the arts have flourished only when the sciences have been neglected. This thesis is… directly contrary to history… [I]n the great age of Greece, art and science penetrate one another more closely than in any modern age. …The example of these men in science as much as in art set the modern world afire in the Renaissance. And the type and symbol of Renaissance man… remains Leonardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, mathematician, and engineer. No man has shown more strikingly the universality and the unity of the intellect.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Men, Age, World, Art

“Some people have called the book the "bible of software engineering". I would agree with that in one respect: that is, everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it.”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

As quoted in Quoted Often, Followed Rarely, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/12/12/8363107/index.htm;About the 1975 The Mythical Man-Month.

People, Books, Quotes, Reading

“Many T. V. channels show astrology. Astrology is not to be confused with astronomy. While astronomy is a science, astrology is pure superstition and humbug. Even a little common sense can tell us that there is no rational connection between the movements of the stars and planets, and whether a person will die at the age of 50 years or 80 years, or whether he will be a doctor or engineer or lawyer.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

On astrology, as quoted in "Justice Markandey Katju on the role of media in India" http://www.thehindu.com/news/justice-markandey-katju-on-the-role-of-media-in-india/article2600319.ece, The Hindu (5 November 2011)

Age, Star, Sense, Science

“The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose. He does not play cricket because it is a good game, but because it creates good citizens. He does not love motor-races for their own sake, but for the advantages they bring to the engineering firms of his country. And it is common knowledge that the devoted persons who conduct and regularly attend horse-races do not do so because they like it, but for the benefit of the breed of the English horse.”

A. P. Herbert book Uncommon Law

"Is Fox-Hunting Fun?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Love, Game, Knowledge, Horse

“Nevertheless Kosovo is not the only indicator of a change of mood, of the sort of moral interventionist internationalism which has come to be associated particularly with Tony Blair. […] in fact, after a quarter of a century of doing nothing, the 'international community' in precisely the same year as Kosovo did engineer the independence of East Timor.”

Adrian Hastings (1929–2001) Roman Catholic priest, historian and author

Adrian Hastings (June 2001) " Chomsky and Kosova - book review http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=802&reportid=151" in Human Rights Review: About American benevolence

Communication, Mood, Change

“Engineers and certified pilots may be expensive but talented young men with a teenager's grasp of risk are surprisingly affordable.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[lsllrn$2m3$1@reader1.panix.com, 2014-08-15]
Reviewing Robert Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo
2010s

Men

“Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking
Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

The Temple (1633), The Church Porch

“Used with caution, such formulae really are very useful indeed, and indeed they form the professional stock-in-trade of most engineering designers and draughtsmen. There is not the slightest need to be ashamed of using them; in fact we all do. But they must be used with caution.
# Make sure that you really understand what the formula is about.
# Make sure that it really does apply to your particular situation.
# Remember, remember, remember, that these formulae take no account of stress concentrations or other special local conditions.”

J.E. Gordon (1913–1998) Materials scientist

Appendix 1, Handbooks and formulae
Structures (or, Why Things Don't Fall Down) (1978)

Understanding

“It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.”

Nathaniel Borenstein (1957) American computer scientist

Footnote in a paper about computational email. Computational Mail as Network Infrastructure for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work http://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/CSCW-ATOMICMAIL.txt Collected quotes about computer languages http://www.sysprog.net/quotlang.html Attributed

Training

“In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but alos, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1960, Cap 1. Scepticism and Faith, p. 41)

God, War, People, Books

“Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which persuades human beings to change their basic assumptions is usually contained in a few phrases.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Section 5: A Note on Ruskin's Writings on Society and Economics
Ruskin Today (1964)

Change

“Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

"How to become a Hacker", reprinted in an appendix to The Cathedral and the Bazaar (2001), p. 196

Cars

“System engineering is the art and science of creating effective systems, using whole system, whole life principles.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Derek Hitchins (1995) cited in: Herbert Negele (2000) Systems engineering--a key to competitive advantage for all industries. p,166

Life, Art, Science

“Ask yourself, if you or a loved one is to undergo brain or heart surgery, does it matter whether the surgeons who will operate had been selected for medical school for any other reason than their aptitude for medicine and surgery? Even if there were no quotas, should race have been "taken into consideration" in their selection? Consider the hairline life and death decisions that surgeons make all the time. Does not every consideration, however slight, apart from aptitude, dilute the qualifications of surgeons for surgery? The next time you are crossing a great bridge, do you not rely upon the qualifications of the engineers and builders to ensure your safety? What does the skin color of the classmates of doctors or engineers have to do with their medicine or their engineering? Is it not their professional qualification that matters, and not either the sameness or the differences from which they came? Is not the same true if we are seeking mathematicians, physicists, economists, or generals? In each case, what is apt for the end in view may be regarded as good, what is inapt may be regarded as bad.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Is Diversity Good? (2003)

Love, Life, Death, School

“The 2004 tour hasn't ended. I still have to finish Latin America and Europe. [Celia Cruz and I] were good friends. Emilio did her first video; we wrote a song for her. I would have loved to have had her there [when recording "90 Millas"]. But she was there. I felt her. That's the beauty of a legacy. Celia was economical and tasty in her choices. And in the pocket like you wouldn't believe? [Which means] It's like a rhythm, from son music. To have it it is to be locked in, like a tuned engine. Once you're in the pocket, you're free. That's why, for most of these songs, I sang and I sang until I had the emotion, then... one take. {Couldn't you be considered the heiress to Celia Cruz? ] you can't give youself a title! That's crazy! If I ever start talking like that, please put me out of my misery. I don't care if I'm 80, with my butt to my ankles, put me down.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

Love, Beauty, Music

“Whatever you specialize in, another specialty will either gobble you, or find a way to replace you. If you get what looks like a secure niche, somebody'll come along and wall you up in it and write your epitaph on it. And the more specialized a society gets, the more dangerous it is for the pure specialist. You think an electronic engineer in any safer than an actor? Or a ditch-digger?”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book The Darfsteller

"The Darfsteller" (1955)

Way, Thinking

“Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U. S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. … Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an editorial http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel published by National Review (2011)

Men, Money, War, Health

“The notion of "system" has gained central importance in contemporary science, society and life. In many fields of endeavor, the necessity of a "systems approach" or "systems thinking" is emphasized, new professions called "systems engineering," "systems analysis" and the like have come into being, and there can be little doubt that this this concept marks a genuine, necessary, and consequential development in science and world-view.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. xvii.

Life, World, Thinking, Science

“I've often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Remarks at conference sponsored by the American Histadrut Cultural Exchange Institute, Harriman, New York (February 17–19, 1967); reported in Judd L. Teller, ed., Government and the Democratic Process; A Symposium by American and Israeli Experts (1969), p. 16
Other speeches and writings

Wisdom, People

“It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima (1945)

War, World, Hope, Way

“When a mechanic wants to fix a broken-down car engine, he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

From "In Defense of Self-defense" I (June 20, 1967)
To Die For The People

People, Cars

“The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behavior control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.”

Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator

"On Cloning a Human Being", p. 52
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

Behavior, Flowers, Science

“The collapse of the standard of living, engineered as result of macro-economic policy, is without precedent in Russian history: " We had more to eat during the Second World War."”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 16, The "Thirdworldization" of the Russian Federation, p. 241

War, World, History

“Justice Antonin Scalia fundamentally changed the way the Supreme Court interpreted both statutes and the Constitution. In both contexts, his focus on text and its original public meaning often translated into more limited criminal prohibitions and broader constitutional protections for defendants. ‎As to statutes, Justice Scalia refocused the court’s attention on the text of the laws Congress enacted. Although he may not have succeeded in getting the court to forswear even looking at legislative history, he did persuade his colleagues to start — and very often end — the analysis with the text. In the criminal context, he limited terms like extortion and property to their common law core and found the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act as unconstitutionally vague as “the phrase ‘fire-engine red, light pink, maroon, navy blue, or colors that otherwise involve shades of red.” When it came to interpreting the Constitution, he likewise put the text first and emphasized that the terms must be understood in light of their original public meaning. He believed that the words should be understood the way the framers used them. This did not mean that constitutional protections were frozen in time.”

Paul Clement (lawyer)

In Scalia, criminal defendants have lost a great defender: Paul Clement https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/02/19/scalia-funeral-constitution-defendants-jury-paul-clement-column/80575460/ (February 19, 2016)

Justice, Law, Color, Way

“I am simply pointing out that at the rate at which we are going the whole genetic engineering technology will end up in the hands of the political system to be used for the complete control and subjugation of man.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 4: There Is Nothing To Understand

Quotes about engineer page 4

Quotes about engineer
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