"Engineering is knowledge work. That is, although the goal of engineering may be to produce useful objects, engineers do not construct such object themselves. Rather they aim to generate knowledge that will allow such objects to be built." (Dorothy A Winsor, "Writing Like an Engineer: A Rhetorical Education", 1966)
"Engineering is a profession, an art of action and synthesis and not simply a body of knowledge. Its highest calling is to invent and innovate." (Daniel V DeSimone & Hardy Cross, "Education for Innovation", 1968)
"Technological invention and innovation are the business of engineering. They are embodied in engineering change." (Daniel V DeSimone & Hardy Cross, "Education for Innovation", 1968)
"[...] it is rather more difficult to recapture directness and simplicity than to advance in the direction of ever more sophistication and complexity. Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again." (Ernst F Schumacher, "Small Is Beautiful", 1973)
"Engineering is superficial only to those who view it superficially. At the heart of engineering lies existential joy." (Samuel C Florman, "The Existential Pleasures of Engineering", 1976)
"From the point of view of modern science, design is nothing, but from the point of view of engineering, design is everything. It represents the purposive adaptation of means to reach a preconceived end, the very essence of engineering." (Edwin T Layton Jr., "American Ideologies of Science and Engineering", Technology and Culture No. 4, 1976)
"Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed. Technological results are forms that exist only because people want to make them, whereas scientific results are formulations of what exists independently of human intentions." (David Billington, "The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering", 1983)
"As engineering becomes increasingly central to the shaping of society, it is ever more important that engineers become introspective. Rather than merely revel in our technical successes, we should intensify our efforts to explore, define, and improve the philosophical foundations of our professions." (Samuel C Florman, "The Civilized Engineer", 1985)
"Engineering is an art of simplification, and the rules - when and how to simplify - are a matter of experience and intuition." (Olle I Elgerd)
"Indeed, the most important part of engineering work - and also of other scientific work - is the determination of the method of attacking the problem, whatever it may be." (Charles P Steinmetz)
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