John Steinbeck Quotes

I was more of a person that liked flying and operating high-performance machinery, and I liked that, the skill it took, the intelligence it took to do that.

To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them. Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble

It would've been amazing [to work as programmer]. You're good at numbers, you're good with people, you like to wear shorts in the summertime.

The ultimate test's always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.

Look for a tough wedge for a tough log.

When you look at the possibilities instead of the problems, the future is filled with endless opportunities

I look for what needs to be done

Look at the problems in your life. Ask yourself, 'What kind of thoughts am I having that create this?'

A mechanic is just an engineer in blue jeans.

For me writing is as close to being an engineer as possible.

When I'm under the gun and I've got pressure on me, I don't panic. I look for the right solution, and then I go for it.

Most of the CEO's who fail think they will find the solution to their problems in Finance, Marketing, Strategic Planning, etc., but they don't look for the solution to their problems inside themselves.

A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.

Working in this industry, I do feel that science and creativity turned out to be a very useful combination for me.

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. (from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)

It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket.

I am - since I was a child - curious about everything. I like to look at how things work and why people are the way they are.

youth looks at its world and age looks through it; youth must get busy on problems whose outlines stand single and strenuous before it, while age can, with luck, achieve a cosmic private harmony unsuited for action as a rule.

We like to invent new disciplines or look at new problems, and invent bandwagons rather than jump on them.

For uncommon solutions, you have to look in uncommon places.

In my life there are not that many questions I can't properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compound interest table.

Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there's no point trying to look in that direction because it won't be coming from there.

... it appears to me that problems, inherent in any writing, loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.

when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.