Quotations

All models are wrong. Some models are useful. -- George Box

Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse, so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance. -- Dr. A. R. Dykes, British Institution of Structural Engineers

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein

Quapropter bono christiano, sive mathematici, sive quilibet impie divinantium, maxime dicentes vera, cavendi sunt, ne consortio daemoniorum animam deceptam, pacto quodam societatis irretiant. The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell. -- St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. -- Poul Anderson

Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future. -- Niels Bohr

I know engineers. They love to change things. -- Dr. McCoy

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Albert Einstein

I never let my schooling get in the way of my education. -- Mark Twain

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. -- Lord Kelvin

Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory. -- Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom.