“Bright but not distinctive as an undergraduate, he had gone to Harvard Law School and finished in the same class as Justice Holmes. But the law bored him – as it had Ferdinand de Lesseps, as it had Roosevelt – so he had decided to be an engineer, “that I may lead a good and useful life.”

“Bright but not distinctive as an undergraduate, he had gone to Harvard Law School and finished in the same class as Justice Holmes. But the law bored him – as it had Ferdinand de Lesseps, as it had Roosevelt – so he had decided to be an engineer, “that I may lead a good and useful life.”

— David McCullough