Engineering & Science Notable Tech Quote Archive #27

Notable Tech Quotes - RF CafeThe number of statements uttered verbally and/or in print is uncountable. Some are more noteworthy than others either because of sheer brilliance, good humor, or utter inanity. We all hope our own remembered words, if any, fall into one of the first two categories rather than the third. I do a lot of reading and find many notable quotes to use that fit the theme of RF Cafe; they fall into all three categories. I always try to verify quotes from original sources or at least from printed books like The Experts Speak, of which I own a hard copy. Enjoy.

Notable Tech Quote Archive

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  • Ward Silver quote, January 2015 QST - RF Cafe"Any time the voltage 'over here' is different than the voltage 'over there,' current will flow." - H. Ward Silver, N0AX, ARRL author of "Hands-On Radio" column in QST (January 2015). Mr. Silver is also the lead editor of the ARRL Handbook.

    12/30/2014, 9/12/2019

  • How the Grinch Stole Christmas! - RF Cafe"Maybe Christmas… doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps… means a little bit more!." - Mr. Grinch, in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!," by Dr. Seuss.

    12/23/2014

  • War Comes, January 1942 QST - RF Cafe"...Nature is no respecter of military emergencies." - K.B. Warner, W1EH, in the January 1942 issue of QST magazine, regarding the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) decree suspending indefinitely all amateur radio activities in the U.S. following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Read the complete "War Comes!" article.

    12/16/2014

  • Ptolemy quotation (Wikipedia image) -  RF Cafe"...it is once and for all clear from the very appearances the earth is in the middle of the world and all weights move towards it." - Ptolemy, The Immobility of the Earth in the Centre of the World. Of course today we know that line of reasoning to be ridiculous since obviously the center of the world is Washington, D.C., or London, or Buenos Aires, or Canberra, or Beijing, or Seoul, or Brussels, or Riyadh, or Moscow, or … - just ask any politician.

    12/9/2014

  • "No rocket will reach the moon save by a miraculous discovery of an explosive far more energetic than any known. And even if the requisite fuel were produced, it would still have to be shown that the rocket machine would operate at four hundred and fifty-nine degrees below zero - the temperature of interplanetary space." Nikola Tesla, from A Prophet of Science Looks into the Future, November 1928 Popular Science

    12/2/2014

  • Thomas Edison Sitting on Tesla Model S - RF Cafe"In fifteen years, more electricity will be sold for automobiles than for light." - Thomas Alva Edison, 1910, as quoted in Science Digest in 1982. This might turn out to be correct after all, fifteen years from now.

    11/25/2014

  • The World According to Lucy - RF Cafe"We learned in school today that there are sixteen ozzes in a lib." - Lucy Van Pelt to Charlie Brown, from You've Got a Friend, Charlie Brown, 1972, by Charles Schulz

    11/18/2014

  • Wounded Warrior Project (tm) - RF Cafe"Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated." - Alphonse de Lamartine, L'Isolement (a translation of 7th stanza), Méditations Poétiques (1820) -- to the families of fallen service members.

    11/11/2014

  • Bertrand Russell notable quote (wikipedia image) - RF Cafe"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell, in his autobiography, c1969

    11/4/2014   7/9/2020

  • The Feynman Lectures on Physics, boxed set: The New Millennium EditionRichard Feynman Notable Quote (UK Telegraph image) - RF Cafe"It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it." - Richard Feynman (start video @ 3:52), populist, Nobel Prize winning physicist.

    10/28/2014

  • Where Does Time Go? - RF Cafe"For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the 8 hours supposedly left after 8 of sleep and 8 of work." - Doug Larson, columnist. This appears in the 2015 edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac. The article in which it appeared, "Where Does the Time Go?," has a lot of anecdotal information about how long people live, average sleep time, TV viewing time, work commuting time, pace of life, etc.

    10/21/2014

  • Casey Stengel quotation (Wikipedia image) - RF Cafe"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate you away from those who are still undecided." Casey Stengel, Major League Baseball manager.

    10/14/2014

  • "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the Notable Quote by H.L. Mencken on Government Alarmism - RF Cafepopulace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary." - H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women. Does that remind you of any current 'hot button' tech topics ... like AGW?

    10/7/2014

  • "IScott Adams (Wikipedia) - RF Cafe think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened." - Scott Adams

    9/30/2014

  • "Niels Bohr (Wikipedia image) - RF CafeAn expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr, as quoted by Edward Teller, in Dr. Edward Teller's Magnificent Obsession, in LIFE magazine (9/6/1954, p62)

    9/23/2014

  • "1 to the 4th Power Amplification in Star Trek Episode - RF CafeBy installing a booster we can increase that capability on the order of one to the fourth power." - Captain James T. Kirk, Commander of the Star Ship Enterprise. While Melanie and I were watching the Star Trek original television series episode titled "Court Martial," I picked up on a funny technical faux pas. Kirk is accused of the negligent death of a crew member with whom he has had a longtime difficult relationship. Believing that the man is faking his own death to incriminate him, Capt. Kirk has the ship's auditory sensors boosted...

    9/16/2014

  • "If I stay poor enough C. Francis Jenkins - RF Cafe Notable Tech Quotelong enough, I may be able to accomplish something really worth while." - ad hoc addendum to poster in the laboratory of Charles Francis Jenkins, the 'Father of Television,' that began, "They said it couldn't be done; but he, poor fool, didn't know it, and went ahead and did it."

    9/9/2014

  • "A hundred times every day The World as I See It, Albert Einstein - RF Cafe Notable QuoteI remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving." - Albert Einstein, in The World as I See It.

    9/2/2014

  • "Thomas Edison Notable Quote (wikipedia image) - RF CafeIt is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or threes years ago was thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere." - Thomas A. Edison, New York World, November 17, 1895. This, from the man who reportedly tried more than 1,000 different materials for his incandescent light bulb before arriving at a coil of carbon filament.

    8/26/2014

  • "Nikola Tesla predicting radar - RF CafeStationary waves in the earth mean something more than mere telegraphy without wires to any distance. They will enable us to attain many important specific results impossible otherwise. For instance, by their use we may produce at will, from a sending-station, an electrical effect in any particular region of the globe; we may determine the relative position or course of a moving object, such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same, or its speed; or we may send over the earth a wave of electricity traveling at any rate we desire... " - Nikola Tesla describing a future technology called radar. "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy," The Century, 1900.

    8/19/2014

  • "One of the biggest causes of hard drive crashes today is a Congressional subpoena." - Anon

    8/12/2014