Charles Proteus Steinmetz quotes:

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  • Marking dynamos for repair $10,000.00-2 hours labor $10.00; knowing where to mark $9,990.00.

  • No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.

  • From a mathematical standpoint it is possible to have infinite space. In a mathematical sense space is manifoldness, or combinations of numbers. Physical space is known as the 3-dimension system. There is the 4-dimension system, the 10-dimension system.

  • Scientific theories need reconstruction every now and then. If they didn't need reconstruction they would be facts, not theories. The more facts we know, the less radical become the changes in our theories. Hence they are becoming more and more constant. But take the theory of gravitation; it has not been changed in four hundred years.

  • Money is a stupid measure of achievement, but unfortunately it is the only universal measure we have.

  • I have succeeded in getting my actual work down to thirty minutes a day. That leaves me eighteen hours for engineering.

  • Electricity is doing for the distribution of energy what the railroads have done for the distribution of materials.

  • Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute proof. But this is so only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional. In E. T. Bell Men of Mathematics, New York: Simona and Schuster, 1937.

  • [I predict] the electricity generated by water power is the only thing that is going to keep future generations from freezing. Now we use coal whenever we produce electric power by steam engine, but there will be a time when there'll be no more coal to use. That time is not in the very distant future. ... Oil is too insignificant in its available supply to come into much consideration.

  • The scientist knows that the ultimate of everything is unknowable. No matter What subject you take, the current theory of it if carried to the ultimate becomes ridiculous. Time and space are excellent examples of this.

  • Spiritual power is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest force in the development of men. Ye. we have been merely playing with it and never have really studied it as we have the physical forces. Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness, and are of little use in making people creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of spiritual forces which have hardly been scratched.

  • The mercury light doesn't show red. It makes the blood in your skin look blue-black. But see how splendidly it brings out the green in the plants.

  • In the realm of science, all attempts to find any evidence of supernatural beings, of metaphysical concepts, as God, immortality, infinity, etc have thus far failed, and if we are honest, we must confess that in science there exists no God, no immortality, no soul or mind, as distinct from the body.

  • The most important advance in the next fifty years will be in the realm of the spiritual - dealing with the spirit of thought.

  • The scientist is not much given to talking of the riddle of the universe. "Riddle" is not a scientific term. The conception of a riddle is "something which can he solved." And hence the scientist does not use that popular phrase. We don't know the why of anything. On that matter we are no further advanced than was the cavedweller. The scientist is contented if he can contribute something toward the knowledge of what is and how it is.

  • Indeed, the most important part of engineering work-and also of other scientific work-is the determination of the method of attacking the problem, whatever it may be, whether an experimental investigation, or a theoretical calculation. ... It is by the choice of a suitable method of attack, that intricate problems are reduced to simple phenomena, and then easily solved.

  • No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

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