It was the feeling of a passenger on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in the engine-room and t...alked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and ...deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and "historical tasks" ... is an actual or potential assass...in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 i...deas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can think of many amusing parallels. For example, "the Borough of ... announces: Miss Jones, the splendid principal of our gramm...ar school, has been offered the position of cook and housekeeper by the family next door, and so we feel obliged to dismiss her and make room for one of the young girls just graduated from training college. Miss Jones may not care to be a cook but since she has that privilege we don't think it right for her to continue to teach, valuable as her services are to the community." Or, "the Educational Committee of ... Borough has adopted a rule to employ no more men teachers who have vegetable gardens, and to notify those men now in its employ who possess vegetable gardens or are contemplating acquiring one that they will be dismissed. We are actuated by the following reasons: (1) The place of a man with a vegetable garden is at home working in his garden. (2) We feel, as a general rule, that a man with a vegetable garden will, to some extent, suffer in his efficiency as a teacher. We have no evidence of this; in fact the vegetable gardeners whom we are about to dismiss are among our best teachers, but nevertheless, we feel that as a general policy our rule is sound from an educational standpoint. (3) A man with a garden will not starve. Therefore, it is unfair to continue paying him a salary as a teacher while men who have no vegetable gardens are waiting for posts [ellipses in original].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But these young scholars, who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,... And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not And all their botany is Latin names. The old men studied magic in the flowers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and s...oldier.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For Nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding economy, working up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation;Mn...ot a superfluous grain of sand, for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emper...or a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »