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

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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

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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

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

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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 ones own
work but also to have ones work checked and to be able to check the work of others.
- Henry Petroski

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to
underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
- Douglas Adams

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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.

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A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design
that works with as few original ideas as possible
- Freeman Dyson

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

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An engineer is someone who is good with figures, but doesnt have the personality of an
accountant.
- An Arts graduates view of engineers

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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

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A theory may be so rich in descriptive possibilities that it can be made to fit any data.
- Phillip Johnson-Laird

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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

*************************************************************

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

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
*************************************************************

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

*************************************************************

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 ones own
work but also to have ones work checked and to be able to check the work of others.
- Henry Petroski

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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

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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

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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

He insists that no mathematical formula, however exact it may appear to be, can be of greater
accuracy than the assumptions on which it is based, and he draws the conclusion that experience
still remains the great teacher and final judge.
- James Kip Finch

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He was living like an engineer in a mechanical world. No wonder he had become dry as a stone.
- Simone de Beauvoir

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His father loved him dearly, but his work, that of a civil engineer, had left him with but little time
for his family. Energetic, active, and always taken up with some responsible work, he did not
spoil his children with excessive tenderness.
- Mme Estafavia

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I am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven there are two matters on which I hope for
enlightement. 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

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Improvement makes strait roads: but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of
Genius.
- William Blake

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In practical work he can be ingenious with regard to modifying apparatus; he uses engineering
rather than imagination.
- Head Teachers reference for a student applying to University

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It takes an engineer to undertake the training of an engineer and not, as often happens, a
theoretical engineer who is clever on a blackboard with mathematical formulae but useless as far
as production is concerned.
- The Rev EB Evans

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