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 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.

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

... 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.

What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit and the waves dance to the music of its melodies and sparkle in its brightness.

What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.

Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.

Friends create the world anew each day. Without their loving care, courage would not suffice to keep heartsstrong for life.

Every father expects his boy to do the things he wouldn't do when he was young.

When it comes down to it, determination has a greater impact than giftedness.

Now her eyes meet mine like green lightning-they are green, these eyes of hers, whose power is so indescribable-green, but as are precious stones, or deep unfathomable mountain lakes.

Invariably, what I'm trying to do is more ambitious than the budget, but we manage to do it somehow.

On the whole, life is unfair in the way it works out. It is a game played without an umpire!