Quotes on Civil Engineering

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

Architecture begins where engineering ends.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

Engineers are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable; that they catch them is imperative. Thus it is the essence of modern engineering not only to be able to check one's own work but also to have one's work checked and to be able to check the work of others.

Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.