Since I began sending emails, I have put quotes at the bottom of them. I change the quote for every email I send. Many people have said that they enjoy them. I thought I would include the most popular here.
| Quote Source | Quote |
| A spacecraft designer whose name I don’t recall. | I don’t believe there is intelligent life on other planets. I believe they are just like us. |
| Professor J.A. Young | … no important contribution was ever first conceived in a manner consistent with what was then known factually — otherwise someone else could have made the contribution earlier … In each instance, someone had to make a wild leap — to his credit (since we tend to forget the ‘crackpots’ who did the same and missed) … This … attitude should be transmitted … This is the poetry of science. |
| Admiral Rickover, 1983, commenting on how changing a failing school is one of the most difficult challenges around. | Changing schools is like moving a graveyard. |
| Lord Rutherford | All science is either physics or stamp collecting. |
| The Lenten sacrifice of an engineer. | I am going to give up Pilsners. |
| Petronious Arbiter, 210 BC | We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. |
| Roald Amundsen (1872-1928), first man to the South Pole. He is considered by many to have been the most efficient of the great explorers. | Adventure is just bad planning. |
| Russian story of a mathematician. | There is a story. A balloon floats away in the clouds. The crew caught sight of a man and shouted to him ‘Where are we?’ The man replies ‘You are in a basket.’ It was an answer of a mathematician. Only a mathematician could give an absolutely right and absolutely useless answer. |
| Scientist on the differences between engineers and scientist. | Surprises – they are the difference between engineers and scientists. Engineers hate surprises. We love them. |
| Tom Wescott, control systems engineer on how helicopters fly. | Helicopters fly by vibrating so hard that some components exceed the speed of light. This causes an anti-gravity effect that makes the helicopter lift off the ground. The blades are just there for control. This high vibration environment can be bad on electronics, particularly if some of their sensitive components are the ones exceeding the speed of light. |
| Pamela Anderson | I don’t really think about anything too much. I live in the present. I move on. I don’t think about what happened yesterday. If I think too much, it kind of freaks me out. |
| My mother on religion. | You’d better pray that will come out of that carpet! |
| My mother on safety. | You fall out of that tree and break both your legs, don’t come running home to me. |
| Teddy Roosevelt, answering a press question about his wild eldest daughter Alice. Alice was an early version of the Bush twins. | I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both. |
Math Encounters Blog 