Engineering Quotes - Page 12

Perhaps the best reason to consider the hard sciences is that, well, one study suggests science, engineering, medicine, and dentistry graduates live longer than arts graduates (or law grads). So whatever money you make you can keep a bit longer.

No effect that requires more than 10 percent accuracy in measurement is worth investigating.

I think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.

Engineers use knowledge primarily to design, produce, and operate artifacts. ... Scientists, by contrast, use knowledge primarily to generate more knowledge.

The role of geo-engineering should, in a world of responsibility, in a world of scientifically enlightened decision making and ecological understanding, it should be zero. There is no role for geo-engeneering. Because what is geoengineering but extending the engineering paradigm?

The idea of engineering is an idea of mastery. And today the role that we are being asked to play is a role based on informed humanity.

Engineering is easy - it's the people problems that are hard.

Engineering is merely the slow younger brother of physics.

C-68 has little to do with gun control or crime control, but it is the first step necessary to begin the social re-engineering of Canada.

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

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

By the time we, consumers, are aware of processes like genetic engineering, they're already being done. It's sort of like the war in Iraq: By the time we know about it, it's almost a fait accompli. And that's certainly true with science.

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.

Science is concerned with what is possible while engineering is concerned with choosing, from among the many possible ways, one that meets a number of often poorly stated economic and practical objectives.

Put glibly: In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state.

Engineering isn't about perfect solutions; it's about doing the best you can with limited resources.

Happiness is German engineering, Italian cooking, and Belgian chocolate.

The process of shaping opinion, attitudes, and perceptions was termed the 'engineering of consent' by one of the founders of the modern public relations industry, Edward Bernays.

The central activity of engineering, as distinguished from science, is the design of new devices, processes and systems.

It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge.

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

I was going to engineering school but fell in love with physics.

A country's competitiveness starts not on the factory floor or in the engineering lab. It starts in the classroom.

As a young designer explained to me bluntly: "Everyone upstairs is dumb," referring to the floor above the engineering lair at the 156 University office where customer support, administrators and salespeople sat. My first impulse was to laugh at his ridiculous, blithe dismissiveness, until I realized that it wasn't very funny.

An undertaking of great magnitude and importance, the successful accomplishment of which, in so comparatively short a period, notwithstanding the unheard of unestimable difficulties and impediments which had to be encountered and surmounted, in an almost unexplored and uninhabited wilderness . . . evinced on your part a moral courage and an undaunted spirit and combination of science and management equally exciting our admiration and deserving our praise.