Jamie Hyneman Quotes

If I could do anything, I'd be an engineer of some sort. I used to build robots.

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

The way to solve problems in the world is to become scientists and technologists and build things that haven't been built before and discover things that people really don't know about.

When I was a kid, I never wanted to be James Bond. I wanted to be Q, because he was the guy who made all the gadgets. I guess you could say that engineering came naturally.

I was always fascinated by how things work and learning about them.

I love working with technology because it allows me to follow my imagination and to invent new things.

Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

I think there's always room for more innovation and new things.

I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing about these things satisfies my curiosity about the made world while at the same time giving me an opportunity to design a new explanation for the processes that shape it.

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

I was interested in science or, at least, nature from an early age, learning the names of planets, cutting cartoons with facts about animals out of the newspaper and gluing them into a scrapbook, and, with a friend when I was five or six, trying to design a submarine.

Science is analytical, descriptive, informative. Man does not live by bread alone, but by science he attempts to do so. Hence the deadliness of all that is purely scientific.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by things large and small. I wanted to know what made my watch tick, my radio play, and my house stand. I wanted to know who invented the bottle cap and who designed the bridge. I guess from early on I wanted to be an engineer.

What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century.

The Swedish engineer who invented the zip fastener made a greater intellectual leap than many scientists do in a lifetime.

I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation.

That's the nice thing about doing research. Whatever you do is novel, so you always have this sense of novelty, even if you are only using a new gadget.

I grew up obsessed with science fiction, and when I was really young, I wanted to be a scientist.

I have the instruments, ideas, technology, computer techniques. We try to create or see something, which has not been known before - just to discover something together. This is always my dream.

Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He's always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.

The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists.

What art was to the ancient world, science is to the modern.