"[...] engineering is fundamentally committed to the translation of scientific facts and information to concrete machines, structures, materials, processes, and the like that can be used by men." (Eric A Walker, "Engineers and/or Scientists", Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 51, 1961)
"Engineering is a method and a philosophy for coping with that which is uncertain at the earliest possible moment and to the ultimate service to mankind. It is not a science struggling for a place in the sun. Engineering is extrapolation from existing knowledge rather than interpolation between known points. Because engineering is science in action - the practice of decision making at the earliest moment - it has been defined as the art of skillful approximation." (Ronald B Smith, "Engineering Is…", Mechanical Engineering Vol. 86 (5), 1964)
"Engineering is the art of skillful approximation; the practice of gamesmanship in the highest form. In the end it is a method broad enough to tame the unknown, a means of combing disciplined judgment with intuition, courage with responsibility, and scientific competence within the practical aspects of time, of cost, and of talent." (Ronald B Smith, "Professional Responsibility of Engineering", Mechanical Engineering Vol. 86 (1), 1964)
"Engineering is knowledge work." (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)
"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)
"Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed." (David Billington, "The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering", 1983)
"Engineering, like poetry, is an attempt to approach perfection." (Henry Petroski, "To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design", 1985)
"[...] engineering is physics applied to structures and machines. They and chemistry are the sciences that biologists need to explain the structure and mechanism of living things." (R McNeill Alexander, "Dynamics of Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Giants", 1989)
"Good engineering is not a matter of creativity or centering or grounding or inspiration or lateral thinking, as useful as those might be, but of decoding the clever, even witty, messages the solution space carves on the corpses of the ideas in which you believed with all your heart, and then building the road to the next message." (Fred Hapgood, "Up the infinite Corridor: MIT and the Technical Imagination", 1993)
"Engineering is the application of scientific principles toward practical ends." (Steve McConnell, "After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering", 1999)
"Engineering isn't about perfect solutions; it's about doing the best you can with limited resources." (Randy Pausch, "The Last Lecture", 2008)
"Engineering is a living branch of human activity and its frontiers are by no means exhausted." (Igor I Sikorsky)
"Engineering is an art of simplification, and the rules - when and how to simplify - are a matter of experience and intuition." (Olle I Elgerd)
"Engineering is like dancing; you don’t learn it in a darkened lecture hall watching slides: you learn it by getting out on the dance floor and having your toes stepped on." (Jack Alford)
"Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering is practicing the art of the organizing forces of technological change. [...] Engineers operate at the interface between science and society." (Gordon S Brown)
"Engineering is the art or science of utilizing, directing or instructing others in the utilization of the principles, forces, properties and substances of nature in the production, manufacture, construction, operation and use of things [...] or of means, methods, machines, devices and structures [...]" (Alfred W Kiddle)
"Engineering is the conscious application of science to the problems of economic production." (Halbert P Gillette)
"Engineering is the professional and systematic application of science to the efficient utilization of natural resources to produce wealth." (T J Hoover & J C L Fish)
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