Essential Quotes for Scientists and Engineers

*From the Preface*: There are many quote collections available, both in print and online—see, e.g., the list of references at the end of this publication. However, I could not find a collection that would be, to my taste, reasonably comprehensive, at the same time being sufficiently refined for a typical busy member of the science/engineering community, to which I belong. This is why I dare to offer this community (including students of STEM disciplines) a modest set of less than 2500 my personal favorites, accumulated over nearly a decade of bedtime reading. These quotes (on quite a few topics, not just science and engineering per see) have been selected for either their importance for the community, or depth of thought, or wit—or all of the above. Any selection implies a certain bias, but this collection still includes different perspectives—in my humble view, all non-trivial —on quite a few debatable issues. To make the consecutive reading of the quotes more engaging, the entries are not only grouped into topical sections but also thematically ordered inside each section, forming quasi-continuous narrative threads. The unavoidable twists and turns and (less frequent) breaks of the threads are marked with three-asterisk lines.