#engine

I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a threshing rig steam engine and I loved the machinery. ↗

— Clyde Tombaugh

#engineer #engines #father #guess #i

In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207) ↗

— Alain de Botton

#engineering #literature #simplicity #words #writing

We dream of it, then we try to write it - and all hell breaks loose ↗

— Scott Rosenberd

#dreams

We want you to write it down--to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan't have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We'll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the N.I.C.E. wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you'd have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to and end. Odd thing it is--the word 'experiment' is unpopular, but not the word 'experimental.' You must'nt experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the N.I.C.E. and it's all correct! ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#schools #social-engineering #education

I've never been a fan of presidents who place blame on their predecessors or who accept credit for events that couldn't have been engineered so soon in their tenure. ↗

— Kathleen Parker

#been #blame #credit #engineered #events

Find the fountain of fuel of life! When you do, then right next to it... you'll see the best engine ever existed. ↗

— Toba Beta

#living-engine #life

You must live a very free life." "Me?" she laughed. "I am not who swoops out of the sky to rain fire on pirates!" "Yeah, but before this I never did much. I mean I did a lot, but...I lived in a room at a university, and my whole world was in that little room. There was this world inside my head." De la Fitte studied his head as if she could see through his skull to a little globe inside it somewhere. ↗

— Sam Starbuck

#america #engineer #fire #london #pirates

It is interesting to wonder whether taxonomists of the future may regret the way our generation messed around with genomes. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#science #science

In this world . . . It's Heaven when: The French are chefs The British are police The Germans are engineers The Swiss are bankers And the Italians are lovers It's Hell when: The English are chefs The Germans are police The French are engineers The Swiss are lovers And the Italians are bankers. ↗

— Hidekaz Himaruya

#chefs #engineers #heaven #hell #hetalia

I'm quite into the idea of engineering being beautiful. ↗

— Sean Booth

#being #being beautiful #engineering #i #idea