“Engineering is the art and science of nuts and bolts.”
― Haresh Sippy
 
“Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.”
― Scott Adams
 
“But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”
― Hayao Miyazaki
 
“All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.”
― Richard Lamm
 
“The fewer moving parts, the better." "Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering.”
― Christian Cantrell
 
“Engineering is not only study of 45 subjects but it is moral studies of intellectual life.”
― Prakhar Srivastav
 
“Are engineers better at business than business people? It’s debatable. Business people certainly seems to have bigger houses, drive fancier cars, wear nicer clothes and have better looking mates. Engineers lack the time management skills to spend that kind of money. They waste all their time inventing ways to make the most money in the quickest, most efficient way possible. And then when they figure it out, they optimize the process.”
― Raul Perez
 
“Great triumphs of engineering genius—the locomotive, the truss bridge, the steel rail— ... are rather invention than engineering proper.”
― Arthur Mellen Wellington
 
“First rule of engineering; beware prototypes. Along with, avoid anything made by an engineer who doesn't have all his own fingers.”
― Simon R. Green
 
“Engineering stimulates the mind. Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things. When the schools can offer that, you’ll have an engineer for life.”
― Bruce Dickinson
 
“I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”
― Elon Musk
 
“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
― Freeman Dyson
 
“To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
― Unknown
 
“What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems… there’s no law of physics preventing them.”
― Michio Kaku
 
“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
 
“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
 
“Engineering ... to define rudely but not inaptly, is the art of doing that well with one dollar, which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.”
― Arthur Mellen Wellington
 
“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 one's own work but also to have one's work checked and to be able to check the work of others.”
― Henry Petroski
 
“It is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer's high privilege.”
― Herbert Hoover
 
“No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other peoples money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness that flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolade he wants.”
― Herbert Hoover
 
“One has to watch out for engineers - they begin with the sewing machine and end up with the atomic bomb.”
― Marcel Pagnol, Critiques des Critiques
 
“The history of engineering is really the history of breakages, and of learning from those breakages. I was taught at college 'the engineer learns most on the scrapheap'.”
― CA Claremont, Spanning Space
 
“The well being of the world largely depends upon the work of the engineer. There is a great future and unlimited scope for the profession; new works of all kinds are and will be required in every country, and for a young man of imagination and keenness I cannot conceive a more attractive profession. Imagination is necessary as well as scientific knowledge.”
― Sir William Halcrow
 
“When engineers and quantity surveyors discuss aesthetics and architects study what cranes do we are on the right road.”
― Ove Arup
 
“The life work of the engineer consists in the systematic application of natural forces and the systematic development of natural resources in the service of man.”
― Harry Walter Tyler
 
“The scientist discovers a new type of material or energy and the engineer discovers a new use for it.”
― Gordon Lindsay Glegg
 
“Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long-lasting, structures? Aren’t the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony?”
― Gustave Eiffel
 
“A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him.”
― Gordon Lindsay Glegg
 
“Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering is practicing the art of the organising forces of technological change… Engineers operate at the interface between science and society.”
― Gordon Stanley Brown
 
“Engineering is quite different from science. Scientists try to understand nature. Engineers try to make things that do not exist in nature. Engineers stress invention.”
― Yuan-Cheng Fung
 
“Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.”
― Thomas Tredgold
 
“Engineering is the professional and systematic application of science to the efficient utilisation of natural resources to produce wealth."
― Theodore Jesse Hoover
 
“Engineering or technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed."
― David Billington
 
“Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.”
― Isaac Asimov
 
“Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been.”
― Theodore von Karman
 
“The story of civilisation is, in a sense, the story of engineering - that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man’s good.”
― Lyon Sprague DeCamp
 
“The ideal engineer is a composite… He is not a scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is not a sociologist or a writer, but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of these disciplines in solving engineering problems.”
― NW Dougherty
 
“Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving energy, kinetic and potential, provided and stored up by nature for the use of man. It is the business of engineering to utilise this energy to the best advantage, so that there may be the least possible waste.”
― William A Smith
 
“The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history.”
― James Kip Finch
 
“You see, my ambition was not to confound the engineering world but simply to create a beautiful piece of art.”
― Kit Williams
 
“A good engineer thinks in reverse and asks himself about the stylistic consequences of the components and systems he proposes.”
― Helmut Jahn
 
“Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.”
― Scott Adams
 
Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”
― Unknown
 
“If not for the compulsions of engineers, mankind would never have seen the wheel, settling instead for the trapezoid because some Neanderthal in marketing convinced everybody it had great braking ability.”
― Scott Adams
 
“The engineer is a mediator between the philosopher and the working mechanic and, like an interpreter between two foreigners must understand the language of both, hence the absolute necessity of possessing both practical and theoretical knowledge.”
― Henry Palmer

Leonard (Len) Beadell OAM BEM
Beadell was a surveyor, road builder, bushman, artist and author, responsible for constructing over 6000 km of roads and opening up isolated desert areas (some 2.5 million square kilometres) of central Australia from 1947 to 1963. Born in West Pennant Hills, New South Wales, Beadell is sometimes called "the last true Australian explorer".
 
Len Beadell marked "astrofixes" along his roads with aluminium plates on which latitude, longitude and other information was stamped. Len's legacy can be seen on many standard Australian road maps of central desert areas, showing such things as "Len Beadell's Tree", and "Len Beadell's Burnt Out Truck". Mount Beadell in Western Australia was formally named after him by the Surveyor General of Western Australia in 1958.

Henry Dangar
Henry Dangar was a surveyor and explorer of Australia in the early period of British colonisation. He was born on 18 November 1796 in Cornwall, United Kingdom, and was the first of six brothers to emigrate as free settlers to New South Wales. Soon after arrival in April 1821 he was appointed assistant government surveyor under John Oxley, and employed in the counties of Camden and Argyle. He remained in this position until 1827, surveying among other places, the township of Newcastle. Cornish place names, scattered through the Hunter Region, mark Henry Dangar's surveys and record his deep affection for his birthplace. Mount Dangar, Dangarfield, Dangar Falls, and Dangarsleigh commemorate his name.
 
Dangar received two grants of land for his services as a surveyor - 300 acres, named 'Neotsfield' and 700 acres near Morpeth, known as 'Baroona'. He returned to England in 1828 and after his return he was granted land at Kingdon Ponds. He completed survey work in the Port Stephens area for the Australian Agricultural Company until 1833.

​Sir John Forrest GCMG
John Forrest, 1st Baron Forrest of Bunbury GCMG was an Australian explorer, the first Premier of Western Australia and a cabinet minister in Australia's first federal parliament.
 
In November 1863, he served as an apprentice to a government land surveyor named Thomas Carey. When his term of apprenticeship ended in November 1865, he became the first man born and educated in the colony to qualify as a land surveyor. He then commenced work as a surveyor with the government's Lands and Surveys Department.
 
As a young man, he won fame as an explorer by leading three expeditions into the interior of Western Australia, for which he was awarded the 1876 Royal Geographical Society's Patron's Medal. He was appointed Surveyor General and in 1890 became the first Premier of Western Australia, its only premier as a self-governing colony.

​Alexander Forrest CMG
Alexander Forrest CMG was an explorer and surveyor of Western Australia who later became a member of parliament.
 
As a government surveyor, Forrest explored many areas of remote Western Australia, particularly the Kimberley region. Several of his expeditions were conducted alongside his brother, Sir John Forrest, who became the first Premier of Western Australia. In later life, Forrest served in the unicameral Legislative Council from 1887 to 1890, representing the seat of Kimberley.
 
In 1891, through a syndicate comprising Charles Crossland and George Leake, Alexander Forrest commenced the subdivision of what would later become the affluent Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove.
 
Following the advent of responsible government, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly, representing the seat of West Kimberley from 1890 until his death. He was also mayor of Perth on two occasions, from 1892 to 1895 and from 1897 to 1900.

​Thomas Livingstone Mitchell
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, surveyor and explorer of south-eastern Australia, was born at Grangemouth in Stirlingshire, Scotland. In 1827 he took up an appointment as Assistant Surveyor General of New South Wales. The following year he became Surveyor General and remained in this position until his death. As Surveyor General he did much to improve the quality and accuracy of surveying – a vital task in a colony where huge tracts of land were being opened up and sold to new settlers.
 
Mitchell also completed maps and plans of Sydney, including Darling Point, Point Piper, the city, and Port Jackson. In 1834 he was commissioned to survey a map of the Nineteen Counties. The map he produced was done with such skill and accuracy that he was awarded a knighthood in 1839 for his contribution to the surveying of Australia.

​Charles Brunsdon Fletcher
Charles Brunsdon Fletcher was an English-born Australian surveyor and journalist who served as the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald for twenty years.
 
After completing school, Fletcher joined the Survey Department of New South Wales as a cadet. He rose to supernumerary draftsman in 1879 and became a field assistant four-year later. Before moving to Brisbane in 1884 he worked on the Detail Survey of the City of Sydney. He obtained his Queensland survey licence in 1885 and commenced private practice. For five years from 1888 he served on the Board of Examiners of Licensed Surveyors.

​Robert David FitzGerald
Robert David FitzGerald was an Irish-Australian surveyor, ornithologist, botanist and poet.
FitzGerald arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1856 and was soon appointed to the Department of Lands as a draftsman for the crown. In 1868 FitzGerald was then promoted to control the roads branch of that department.
 
By 1873 he had become Deputy Surveyor General, and by 1874 he had been given responsibility as the Chief Mining Surveyor as well as controller of Church and School Lands for New South Wales. Following the advent of the Crown Lands Act of 1884 part of his duty was to analyse and consider the future roles of his department and ironically that analysis resulted in a number of retrenchments including his own.

​John Septimus Roe
John Septimus Roe was the first Surveyor-General of Western Australia. He was a renowned explorer, and a Member of Western Australia's Legislative and Executive Councils for nearly 40 years.
 
In 1817, the Admiralty of the Navy appointed him to the surveying service in New South Wales, under the command of Captain Phillip Parker King. Roe's first survey journey as assistant to King was the King expedition of 1817, a rough survey of the northern and north-west coast of Australia.

​George Washington
George Washington was an American statesman and soldier who served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797 and was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
 
Washington's introduction to surveying began at an early age through school exercises that taught him the basics of the profession, followed by practical experience in the field. His first opportunity as a surveyor occurred in 1748 when he was invited to join a professional survey party organized by his neighbor and friend George Fairfax to lay out large tracts of land along the border of western Virginia.
 
Washington began his career as a professional surveyor in 1749 at the age of 17. He subsequently received a commission and surveyor's license from the College of William & Mary and became the official surveyor for the newly formed Culpeper County. He completed his first survey in less than two days, plotting a 400-acre parcel of land, and was well on his way to a promising career.
 
For the next four years, Washington worked surveying land in Western Virginia for the Ohio Company. In October 1750, Washington resigned his position as an official surveyor but continued to work over the next three years at his new profession. He continued to survey professionally for two more years before receiving a military appointment as adjutant for southern Virginia. By 1752, Washington completed close to 200 surveys on numerous properties totaling more than 60,000 acres. He continued to survey at different times throughout his life and as late as 1799.

​Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker was a free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free African American woman and a former slave, Banneker had little formal education and was largely self-taught. He is known for being part of a group led by Major Andrew Ellicott that surveyed the borders of the original District of Columbia, the federal capital district of the United States.

​William Austin Burt
William Austin Burt was an American inventor, legislator, surveyor, and millwright. He was the inventor of the first typewriter constructed in America and is referred to as the "father of the typewriter." But Burt is better known for inventing the first workable solar compass in 1835 as a solar use surveying instrument.
 
Many of the problems encountered by surveyors were solved with the use of the magnetic compass. Burt was an active surveyor in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and other states and was the leader of many survey teams in Michigan when it was just a wilderness. His solar compass and adaptations of it became standard instruments for the government land survey in much of the western United States and were used until the Global Positioning System was available in the late 20th century.

​William Crawford
William Crawford was an American soldier and surveyor who worked as a western land agent for George Washington. Crawford fought in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War.
 
In 1749, Col. William Crawford became acquainted with George Washington who was a young surveyor at the time, somewhat younger than Crawford. He accompanied Washington on surveying trips and learned the trade. When the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois opened up additional land for settlement, Crawford worked again as a surveyor, locating lands for settlers and speculators.

David Thompson
David Thompson was a British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and map-maker, known to some native peoples as "Koo-Coo-Sint" or "the Stargazer." Over his career he mapped over 3.9 million square kilometers of North America and for this has been described as the "greatest land geographer who ever lived.”
 
As an apprentice he expanded his mathematical, astronomical, and surveying skills under the tutelage of Hudson's Bay Company surveyor Philip Turnor. He entered the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company as a fur trader. In 1792 he completed his first significant survey, mapping a route to Lake Athabasca (where today's Alberta/Saskatchewan border is located). In recognition of his map-making skills, the company promoted Thompson to surveyor in 1794.

​Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen FRS FZS FRGS MBOU, known until 1854 as Henry Haversham Austen, was an English topographer, geologist, naturalist and surveyor. He explored the mountains in the Himalayas and surveyed the glaciers at the base of K2, also known as Mount Godwin-Austen. The geographer Kenneth Mason called Godwin-Austen "probably the greatest mountaineer of his day".