Famous Quotes & Sayings

David Attenborough

It's lost on me. I can just about tell if it's got a jet engine or one of those funny things on the front!

In the '60s, everyone tried to follow Pontiac's lead and put big engines in mid-sized cars.

Dave Grohl

When you're young, you're not afraid of what comes next. You're excited by it.

David Whyte

For the personality, bankruptcy or failure may be a disaster. For the soul, it may be grist for its strangely joyful mill, and a condition it has been secretly engineering for years.

His father looked out and saw a turbine engine turning right outside his window.

He's like really the engine that runs this team. This team is just prepared for him to come back whenever he feels comfortable and after him and his wife and his family get over the grieving process.

Freeman Dyson

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

Fred Brooks

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.

I heard the engine screaming, a loud explosion and saw big red flames. That was it ... it was total silence.

Before, there weren't a lot of questions about the size of the engine and the gas mileage.

The military police were there to provide support to local law enforcement, and the engineers were used for search-and-recovery mission support and evacuation support,

The military police were there to provide support to local law enforcement , and the engineers were used for search-and-recovery mission support and evacuation support ,

There are excellent public interest grounds to have a search engine whose rankings are transparent.

After I hired several engineers and managers, they read through the equipment manuals. By the time the equipment arrived, they knew all about it. I can't say enough about the work ethic.

So, we just went through a process of trial and error to get it to do what we wanted. Next time, we'll make the engine more fire-like.

It's a big fire. I can't tell how many engines and trucks are out here. But there are at least four from our department.

The search engines all return roughly the same results.

Carl Edwards

The Roush Yates engine guys, I went over to the shop the other day, and they feel great about the new engines. I'm excited.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Elon Musk

Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.

Steven Pinker

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

Steven Pinker

Aggression, like every other part of human behavior we take for granted, is a challenging engineering problem!

Richard Hamming

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.

Richard Hamming

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.

Henry Petroski

What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of design is still to obviate failure, and thus it is critical to identify exactly how a structure may fail. The computer cannot do this by itself . . .

Henry Petroski

I emphasize that virtually every engineering calculation is ultimately a failure calculation, because without a failure criterion against which to measure the calculated result, it is a meaningless number.

Henry Petroski

Failure is Central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation.

Henry Petroski

A failed structure provides a counterexample to a hypothesis and shows us incontrovertibly what cannot be done, while a structure that stands without incident often conceals whatever lessons or caveats it might hold for the next generation of engineers.

Henry Petroski

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

Henry Petroski

Engineering, like poetry, is an attempt to approach perfection. And engineers, like poets, are seldom completely satisfied with their creations. They notice, even if no one else does, the world that is not quite le mot juste, or the hairline crack that blemishes the structure.

Hilaire Belloc

It seems to be saying perpetually; 'I am the end of the nineteenth century; I am glad they built me of iron; let me rust.' ... It is like a passing fool in a crowd of the University, a buffoon in the hall; for all the things in Paris has made, it alone has neither wits nor soul.

Niklaus Wirth

Indeed, the woes of Software Engineering are not due to lack of tools, or proper management, but largely due to lack of sufficient technical competence.

Niklaus Wirth

Good engineering is characterized by gradual, stepwise refinement of products that yields increased performance under given constraints and with given resources.