The 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.
"A lot of companies look for people with tons of theory in their head. I like to
find engineers with soldering iron burns on their fingers." - Alan Dewey, WB9JTK,
JTK Communications 3-26-2008
"Video won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months.
People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." - Darryl Zanuck,
20th Century Fox Studios, c.1946 3-18-2008
"The main purpose of a PowerPoint presentation is entertainment. Intellectual content
is an unwarranted distraction. In preparing a PowerPoint presentation, aesthetics should
transcend substance." - A Day in the
Life of a Doctor: The PowerPoint Presentation 3-10-2008
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage,
MythBusters 3-4-2008
"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up." - Anon
2-28-2008 (9/6/2018)
"The reciprocating piston engine is as dead as a dodo." -
Sports Illustrated, re superiority of the Wankel rotary engine, 1969
2-23-2008
"If the motion of the earth were circular, it would be violent and contrary to nature,
and could not be eternal, since nothing violent is eternal. It follows, therefore, that
the earth is not moved with a circular motion." - St. Thomas Aquinas, philosopher, 1270
AD 2-15-2008
"Transistors are the fluke of nature. They get faster when they get smaller, but
nothing else does." IBM Fellow Dan Edelstein 2-9-2008
"As the ship turns over, the crew tends to hang on more tightly rather than bailing
out." - Anon 1-31-2008
"So much for computers. So much for CAD. I prefer to admit the reality of computer-hindered
design." - Bob Pease, National Semi's ardent champion of the pencil and paper simulation
method 1-25-2008
"If you have five fighter pilots working for you, you can run any company." - Robert
"Babaloo" Richard, EE, USAF test pilot & consultant 1-19-2008
"There were three reasons why we survived. We had no money, we had no technology,
and we had no plan. Every dollar we used very carefully." - Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba.com
1-14-2008
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is
a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" - Benjamin Franklin 1-8-2008
"In the global economy there are but two choices: innovate or evaporate." - Norm
Augustine, CEO Lockheed Martin, ret. 8/15/2019, 12-25-2007
"A hen is only an egg's way of making other eggs" - Samuel Butler 12-17-2007
"A website's primary allegiance can be determined by whether or not it forces visitors
to endure a full-page advertisement they do not want to see, prior to permitting them
to see what they came to see." - Kirt Blattenberger, RF Cafe webmaster 12-11-2007
"We'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did." -
Twitter's Jack Dorsey's
speech at the SXSW Web Awards (they limit posts to 140 characters) 12-4-2007
"Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake every time
you repeat it." - Anon 11-26-2007
"No partial credit! Get wrong answer, bridge fall down!" - former calculus prof of
ED's
Joe Desposito (re I-35W bridge in MN) 11-20-2007
"...And, of course, we can't change Boltzmann's Constant because Professor Boltzmann
is dead." - James Bryant, Analog Devices 11-10-2007
"Stress is just another word for knowledge." - Ratbert 11-1-2007
"In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur 10-25-2007
"Learning to not do what the pointy-haired boss [in Dilbert] does is a pretty fair
way to learn ethics." - Bob Pease, National Semi 10-18-2007
"Fools you are... who say you like to learn from your mistakes... I prefer to learn
from the mistakes of others, and avoid the cost of my own." - Otto von Bismarck 10-8-2007
"We just don't have the number of analog engineers we need [here in the U.S.]" -
Gerald Smith, CEO of Analog Design Consortium 10-1-2007
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein 9-22-2007
"Those who give themselves to ready and rapid practice before they have learned the
theory, resemble sailors who go to sea in a vessel without a rudder" - Leonardo
Da Vinci
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
while typing up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got
Mail" when a new message arrived...
All trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other rights of ownership to images
and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledged.