... the ancient joy of helping the tribe to survive is constantly rekindled in the engineer's heart.

Engineering is the art or science of making practical.

... it is clear that our survival and the salvaging of our environment are dependent on more technology, not less.

We all have ambivalent feelings toward work ... We try to avoid it, and yet we seem to require it for our emotional well-being.

... engineering is a basic instinct in man, the expression of which is existentially fulfilling.

We recognize that we cannot survive on meditation, poems and sunsets. We are restless. We have an irresistible urge to dip our hands into the stuff of the earth and do something with it.

Knowledge gives a wider choice and more anguish.

There is scarcely a technical issue for which you cannot find expert witnesses of differing opinions.

Every technological product has to be designed and its fabrication overseen, and this is what engineers DO.

... man cannot help but transcend himself as soon as he begins to design and construct.

The engineer's power was usually limited to a refusal to endorse a given plan, or to the tender of his resignation.

Inner freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy object for the individual.

I was not successful as a ball player, as it was a game of skill.

If we become an accomplice to criminal activities by the American government, then we are liable too.

one tends to suspect others of what one is guilty of oneself. The unfaithful wife is quick to suspect the husband of infidelity.

I don't understand why a 40 is a quarter of beer when a 40 is 40 ounces. It's time to embrace the metric system.

Had they [the Tories] been in the wilderness they would have complained of the Ten Commandments. Remark.

All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory.

Under the system that we now have to nominate presidential candidates, for instance, I would prefer that we have a system that is closer to, say, the one we had in the 1960s.

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber

The best writing deadlines are poverty and death.