“An engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two.”

“Great triumphs of engineering genius—the locomotive, the truss bridge, the steel rail— ... are rather invention than engineering proper.”

“Kevyn, Ennesby tells me you are building a time machine.Actually I'm finished.In one afternoon? Wow... Does it work?After a fashion....I put a whole lot of energy into it, and the next thing I knew...”

“Engineering is the continuation of politics by other means”

“Each type of knowledge has value; however, from an engineering point of view, practical knowledge seems to be more valuable than theoretical knowledge.”

“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”

“Dagny," he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, "think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He di...”

“Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of "inspiration." It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of scien...”

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”