Samuel Florman Quotes

Engineering is the art or science of making practical.

Knowledge gives a wider choice and more anguish.

... it is clear that our survival and the salvaging of our environment are dependent on more technology, not less.

... the ancient joy of helping the tribe to survive is constantly rekindled in the engineer's heart.

... engineering is a basic instinct in man, the expression of which is existentially fulfilling.

We all have ambivalent feelings toward work ... We try to avoid it, and yet we seem to require it for our emotional well-being.

There is scarcely a technical issue for which you cannot find expert witnesses of differing opinions.

We recognize that we cannot survive on meditation, poems and sunsets. We are restless. We have an irresistible urge to dip our hands into the stuff of the earth and do something with it.

Every technological product has to be designed and its fabrication overseen, and this is what engineers DO.

All about us the sense of disenchantment with technology appears to be growing. No one ... can ignore the fall of the engineer from the dizzying heights he once occupied... . with the coming of the environmental crisis, our relationship to society has changed. We cannot ... pretend that ... a hundred space spectaculars can restore things to what they were.

The engineer's power was usually limited to a refusal to endorse a given plan, or to the tender of his resignation.

... man cannot help but transcend himself as soon as he begins to design and construct.

There will be no new arcadian age. There will always be new burdens, new problems, new failures, new beginnings. And the glory of man is to respond to his harsh fate with zest and ever-renewed effort.