Engineering & Science Notable Quote Archive #16

• "Aim low, off the windshield, because it can mess up your view and there's no way to clear it." - Astronaut Dave Wolf re how to sneeze in space

  9/9/2009

• "The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away." - Ronald Reagan

  9/2/2009

• "Vast Engineering Works Accomplished in an Incredibly Short Time by Our Planetary Neighbors" - The New York Times ("the newspaper of record") headline, Aug. 27, 1911

  8/26/2009

• "A word to the wise ain't necessary. It's the stupid ones who need the advice." - Bill Cosby

  8/19/2009

• "Nokia is making 13 phones every second. We will quickly be the world's biggest entertainment network." – Tero Ojanperä, Nokia

  8/12/2009

• "The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs." Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

  8/5/2009

• "These satellites of Jupiter are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can exercise no influence on the Earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist." Sizzi, defender of the faith, to Galileo

  7/29/2009

• "We were young, and we were fearless and, after all, nobody told us young engineers that we couldn't successfully land humans on another planet. So we did it." – Sy Liegergot, EECOM, Mission Control

  7/22/2009

• "Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?" - Anon

  7/15/2009

• "My new philosophy is that until it is in the Digi-Key catalog it is a marketing fantasy." - Paul Rako, EDN

  7/8/2009 (9/13/2018)

• "There is an interesting dynamic occurring in the electronics industry. The life cycle of a product hardly lasts longer than a fashion season." - Gerry Gaffney

  7/1/2009

• "The real purpose of universities is not to flatter the tastes of those who arrive there, but to present them with a rite of passage into something better." - Roger Scruton

  6/24/2009 

• "Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science" - Edward J. Wegman

  6/17/2009

• "The difference between intelligence and stupidity, is that intelligence has its limits." - Anon (submitted by Mike W.)

  4/30/2020, 6/10/2009

• "Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it." - Lord Kelvin

  6/3/2009, 3/7/2019

• "My running joke with [my accountant wife] is that accountants cannot handle more than two decimal places, and then she will respond with, 'Why would anyone want to deal with or need to deal with more than two decimal places.'" Michael M., RF Cafe visitor

  5/27/2009

• "Man is a Tool-using Animal. Weak in himself, and of small stature … Nevertheless he can use Tools; can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, … seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all." – Thomas Carlyle

  5/20/2009

• "A physicist who professed such ideas was unworthy to teach science." - German Minister of Education, reacting to Georg Simon Ohm's discovery of what became Ohm's Law

  5/13/2009,  8/6/2020

• "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck

  5/6/2009

• "I really do like SOLDERING as my programming language." - Bob Pease

  4/29/2009

• "Empirical studies have repeatedly shown that the single most powerful predictor of eminence within any creative domain is the sheer number of influential products an individual has given the world." - Keith Simonton

  4/22/2009

• "I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things." - Alan Coren

  4/15/2009

• "If the tool ain't right, the guy ain't bright." - Jim Wilson, über engineer

  10/24/2019, 4/8/2009

• "MBA-types in charge thought that [software] coding was a support function, basically a fancy form of typing." - Fog Creek Software

  4/1/2009

• "At DARPA, we're looking at how we can use $2 parts and deal with their limitations." - Preston Marshall, DARPA

  3/25/2009