Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Florman

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Samuel Florman.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Samuel C. Florman is an American civil engineer, general contractor and author. He is best known for his writings and speeches about engineering, technology and the general culture. The most widely distributed of his seven books is The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, published in 1976, second edition in 1994. According to one authority, "It has become an often-referred-to modern classic." His most recently published book is Good Guys, Wiseguys and Putting Up Buildings: A Life in Construction, published in 2012.

American - Author | Born: January 19, 1925

Source: Wikipedia

Every technological product has to be designed and its fabrication overseen, and this is what engineers DO.

Samuel Florman

We recognize that we cannot survive on meditation, poems and sunsets. We are restless. We have an irresistible urge to dip our hands into the stuff of the earth and do something with it.

Samuel Florman

Knowledge gives a wider choice and more anguish.

Samuel Florman

... engineering is a basic instinct in man, the expression of which is existentially fulfilling.

Samuel Florman

There will be no new arcadian age. There will always be new burdens, new problems, new failures, new beginnings. And the glory of man is to respond to his harsh fate with zest and ever-renewed effort.

Samuel Florman

There is scarcely a technical issue for which you cannot find expert witnesses of differing opinions.

Samuel Florman

The engineer's power was usually limited to a refusal to endorse a given plan, or to the tender of his resignation.

Samuel Florman

Engineering is the art or science of making practical.

Samuel Florman

... it is clear that our survival and the salvaging of our environment are dependent on more technology, not less.

Samuel Florman

... man cannot help but transcend himself as soon as he begins to design and construct.

Samuel Florman

We all have ambivalent feelings toward work ... We try to avoid it, and yet we seem to require it for our emotional well-being.

Samuel Florman

All about us the sense of disenchantment with technology appears to be growing. No one ... can ignore the fall of the engineer from the dizzying heights he once occupied... . with the coming of the environmental crisis, our relationship to society has changed. We cannot ... pretend that ... a hundred space spectaculars can restore things to what they were.

Samuel Florman

... the ancient joy of helping the tribe to survive is constantly rekindled in the engineer's heart.

Samuel Florman

Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Florman

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