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Herbert Hoover
(10 Aug 1874 - 20 Oct 1964)
American mining engineer and president who was the 31st U.S. President (1929-1933). He graduated with a degree in geology and became a mining engineer, spending some time in the gold fields of Australia, consultant in China and began his own engineering firm in 1908.
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Science Quotes by Herbert Hoover (11 quotes)
[Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.
— Herbert Hoover
Reprint of his 1916 statement in 'Engineering as a Profession', Engineer’s Week (1954).
[Professional engineers] must for years abandon their white collars except for Sunday.
— Herbert Hoover
Reprint of his 1916 statement in 'Engineering as a Profession', Engineer’s Week (1954).
Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.
— Herbert Hoover
Reprint of his 1916 statement in 'Engineering as a Profession', Engineer’s Week (1954).
Engineering without imagination sinks to a trade.
— Herbert Hoover
Reprint of his 1916 statement in 'Engineering as a Profession', Engineer’s Week (1954).
Every generation has the right to build its own world out of the materials of the past, cemented by the hopes of the future.
— Herbert Hoover
Speech, Republican National Convention, Chicago (27 Jun 1944), 'Freedom in America and the World', collected in Addresses Upon the American Road: 1941-1945 (1946), 254.
It is obvious that while science is struggling to bring Heaven to earth some men are using its materials in the construction of Hell.
— Herbert Hoover
Address delivered to Annual Meeting of the York Bible Class, Toronto, Canada (22 Nov 1938), 'The Imperative Need for Moral Re-armament', collected in America's Way Forward (1939), 51.
Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression.
The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment.
The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment.
The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment.
The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment.
— Herbert Hoover
Address delivered to Annual Meeting of the York Bible Class, Toronto, Canada (22 Nov 1938), 'The Imperative Need for Moral Re-armament', collected in America's Way Forward (1939), 50.
New discoveries in science and their flow of new inventions will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.
— Herbert Hoover
From Commencement Address at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio (11 Jun 1949), 'Give Us Self-Reliance – or Give Us Security', on hoover.archives.gov website.
The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. … He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. … If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again.
— Herbert Hoover
Reprint of his 1916 statement in 'Engineering as a Profession', Engineer’s Week (1954).
The use of the atomic bomb with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.
— Herbert Hoover
Letter (8 Aug 1945) to Colonel John Callan O’Laughlin, publisher of Army an Navy Journal, as quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (1996), 459. Cited as O’Laughlin Correspondence File, Box 171, Post-Presidential Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.
To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope.
— Herbert Hoover
Reprint of his 1916 statement in 'Engineering as a Profession', Engineer’s Week (1954).
Quotes by others about Herbert Hoover (2)
Facts to [Herbert] Hoover's brain are as water to a sponge; they are absorbed into every tiny interstice.
Quoted in David Hinshaw, Herbert Hoover: American Quaker (1950), 30.
Ode to The Amoeba
Recall from Time's abysmal chasm
That piece of primal protoplasm
The First Amoeba, strangely splendid,
From whom we're all of us descended.
That First Amoeba, weirdly clever,
Exists today and shall forever,
Because he reproduced by fission;
He split himself, and each division
And subdivision deemed it fitting
To keep on splitting, splitting, splitting;
So, whatsoe'er their billions be,
All, all amoebas still are he.
Zoologists discern his features
In every sort of breathing creatures,
Since all of every living species,
No matter how their breed increases
Or how their ranks have been recruited,
From him alone were evoluted.
King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba
And Hoover sprang from that amoeba;
Columbus, Shakespeare, Darwin, Shelley
Derived from that same bit of jelly.
So famed is he and well-connected,
His statue ought to be erected,
For you and I and William Beebe
Are undeniably amoebae!
Recall from Time's abysmal chasm
That piece of primal protoplasm
The First Amoeba, strangely splendid,
From whom we're all of us descended.
That First Amoeba, weirdly clever,
Exists today and shall forever,
Because he reproduced by fission;
He split himself, and each division
And subdivision deemed it fitting
To keep on splitting, splitting, splitting;
So, whatsoe'er their billions be,
All, all amoebas still are he.
Zoologists discern his features
In every sort of breathing creatures,
Since all of every living species,
No matter how their breed increases
Or how their ranks have been recruited,
From him alone were evoluted.
King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba
And Hoover sprang from that amoeba;
Columbus, Shakespeare, Darwin, Shelley
Derived from that same bit of jelly.
So famed is he and well-connected,
His statue ought to be erected,
For you and I and William Beebe
Are undeniably amoebae!
(1922). Collected in Gaily the Troubadour (1936), 18.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
