You can have any combination of features the Air Ministry desires, so long as you do not also require that the resulting airplane fly.
[Natürlich können Sie dem Luftfahrtministerium ein Flugzeug mit allen gewünschten Eigenschaften bauen — solange Sie nicht zwingend voraussetzen, dass es dann auch fliegt.]
Wilhelm Emil "Willy" Messerschmitt (1898-1978) German aircraft designer and manufacturer
(Attributed (1934))
Alternate translation:
Of course, you can build the Air Ministry an airplane with whatever characteristics you want -- as long as you don't necessarily expect it to fly.
Quotations about:
engineering
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A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.
Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) English-American theoretical physicist, mathematician, futurist
Disturbing the Universe, ch. 10 (1979)
(Source)
Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they’re much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity.
Eric S. Raymond (b. 1957) American software developer, writer [a.k.a. ESR]
The Cathedral & the Bazaar (1999)
Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.
Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation: and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Novum Organum, Book 2, Aphorism 129 (1620)
Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.
Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, playwright
Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)
The monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Essex’s Device (1595)
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) American inventor and businessman
(Attributed)
(Source)
When told by an associate, Walter S. Mallory, that it was a shame that several months of work on new battery technology hadn't yielded any results. Recorded in Dyer and Martin, Edison: His Life and Inventions, Vol. 2, ch. 24 (1910) as an anecdote by Mallory.
More discussion about this quotation's origins and variants: I Have Gotten a Lot of Results! I Know Several Thousand Things That Won’t Work – Quote Investigator.
