Offset Quotes (3 quotes)
Engineering is more closely akin to the arts than perhaps any other of the professions; first, because it requires the maximum of natural aptitude and of liking for the work in order to offset other factors; second, because it demands, like the arts, an almost selfless consecration to the job; and, third, because out of the hundreds who faithfully devote themselves to the task, only a few are destined to receive any significant reward—in either money or fame.
As coauthor with Frank W. Skinner, and Harold E. Wessman, 'Foreward', Vocational Guidance in Engineering Lines (1933), vi.
In passing, I firmly believe that research should be offset by a certain amount of teaching, if only as a change from the agony of research. The trouble, however, I freely admit, is that in practice you get either no teaching, or else far too much.
From 'The Mathematician's Art of Work' (1967) in Béla Bollobás (ed.) Littlewood's Miscellany (1986), 194.
The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things and by the Department of Home Economics.
Letter to Robert Bacher (6 Apr 1950), as quoted in James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992), 278.
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) -- 
