Quotes

What’s with all the quotes showing up randomly throughout this website? Well, these are quotes that I like, for various reasons. All of them are listed here. Click on each quote to find my sources. Enjoy!

Last week Control Data … announced the 6600 system. I understand that in the laboratory developing the system there are only 34 people including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers … Contrasting this modest effort with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world’s most powerful computer.
Thomas Watson, CEO of IBM
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It seems like Mr. Watson has answered his own question.
Seymour Cray
A good rule for rocket experimenters to follow is this: always assume that it will explode.
G. Edward Pendray
Astronautics, October 1937
Then they asked, then exactly what are you going to do? I had to answer, I don’t know, that is why it is research.
Albert Szent-Györgyi
We believe that if you are not failing, you are not learning and improving the design.
Kate Tice, SpaceX
Kelly Johnson and his team at Skunk Works designed and built the A-12 (SR-71 Blackbird precursor) in about 28 months with a crew of 25 engineers and fewer than 50 technicians, no computers, no analysis, just sliderules and nicotine. And they had to invent stealth tech, computerized celestial navigation, and titanium metallurgy at the same time.
Casey Handmer
You have to have leadership. You have to be able to take risks. Being aware of quality is something they don’t teach you in business school.
Norm Rasmussen
The essence of engineering is the art of the compromise. There is no great design without constraints, and successfully juggling those constraints against the absolute project goals is the engineering primary job.
Bob Colwell
A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.
Mr. Bernstein
You’ll have to learn the ways of the Morse, if you’re to come with me to Dayton.

The Morse is what gives a Ham his power. It’s an energy field created by turning a carrier on and off. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn’t allow it. He feared you might follow old dittybopper on some damn fool DXpedition like your father did. Your father’s Morse key. This is the tool of a ham radio operator. Not as clumsy or random as a microphone; an elegant device for a more civilized age.

For over a thousand generations, CW ops were the guardians of peace and justice in the Aether. Before the dark times… before No Code…

May the Morse be with you.

u/dittybopper_05H
The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components of a computer system are those that aren’t there.
Gordon Bell
If, as a scientist, I’m not wrong? I’m not being bold enough as a scientist.
Jay Bhattacharya
The thing about physics? Doesn’t matter if you believe it! It works the same whether you believe it or not.
Steve Golson
I think the saddest phrase I ever hear in a computer installation is that horrible one: “But we’ve always done it that way.” That’s a forbidden phrase in my office. To emphasize the fact I keep a clock which operates entirely counterclockwise.
Grace Hopper
There is more to Maine than exists in the imagination.
John McPhee
Whatever requirement or constraint you have, it must come with a name, not a department.
Elon Musk
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own.
The Prisoner
Only accurate rifles are interesting.
Col. Townsend Whelen, USA (Ret’d)
Possibly the most common error of a smart engineer, is to optimize a thing that should not exist.
Elon Musk
In the South, eating has little to do with hunger.
Willie Traynor
I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
Tony Hoare
Make your requirements less dumb. Your requirements are definitely dumb.
Elon Musk
Devices can be made foolproof, but not damn-fool-proof.
Henry Petroski
Failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.
Henry Petroski
I’ve come to accept that I will, over the course of my ham career, end up with a lot of antennæ.
u/flwyd
The future should not simply be the past with fewer bugs.
Robin Diane Goldstein
No such thing as enough guns, ma’am, I’ll beg your pardon for saying so.
Bob Lee Swagger
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I feel the same way about radios.
Steve W1SEG
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing you are not innovating.
Elon Musk
Information sort of wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable… On the other hand, information almost wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out, in many respects, is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other.
Stewart Brand
If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
Strive for design simplicity. You never have to fix anything you leave out.
Bill Lear
Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.
Tom West

W1SEG Amateur Radio Station