# Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten. Steel with increased carbon content can be made harder and stronger than iron, but such steel is also less ductile than iron.

## Quotes

* Men are like steel — when they lose their temper, they lose their worth.
** Anonymous proverb; though often attributed to Chuck Norris, this seems to have appeared at least as early as 1961, in an edition of The Physical Educator
* As for Zillah, she also gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron; and the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.
** Genesis 4:22, New American Standard Bible, (1970)
* When iron was found, the trees began to tremble, but the iron reassured them: 'Let no handle made from you enter into anything made from me, and I shall be powerless to injure you.'
** Genesis Rabbah 5, Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 61
* It was easier in the old days, of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the building now as well. Now that society is all ferrocrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment.
** Harry Harrison, in A Stainless Steel Rat is Born (1985)
* If men are to meet steel with steel, they should be adequately armed. Long spears and short swords to meet a charge of long swords. If you don't believe that, read the chronicles of Rome and Macedonia.
** Robert E. Howard, in a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (24 August 1923)
* "Iron can destroy anything: families, fortunes, governments, whole countries. It's the most powerful stuff in the universe." "Oh?" Orry's skeptical glance fell down on the Plain below. "You really think it's more powerful than a big army?" "Without weapons - without this - there are no big armies."
** John Jakes, Answer the Drum
* Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide. The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel, formerly used to kill men, but here In the sense of a symbol.
** Robinson Jeffers, in "Contemplation of The Sword" (1938)
* I've long believed alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, the stronger tendency is to converge — that if steel or automobiles are wanted and must be made on a large scale, the process will stamp its imprint on the society, whether that me be Magnitogorsk or Gary, Indiana.
** John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977), p. 84
* And he sang: "Hurra for my handiwork!" And the red sparks lit the air; Not alone for the blade was the bright steel made; And he fashioned the first ploughshare.
** Charles Mackay, Tubal Cain, Stanza 4, in Hearty Staves of Heart-Music (1858) edited by John Erskine Clarke, p. 82
* How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood [...]
** Wilfred Owen
* I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this... that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes... pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts... all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not.
** Robert M. Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8
* He had the unique opportunity to watch Conina fight. Not many men ever got to see it twice. Her opponents started off grinning at the temerity of a slight young girl attacking them, and then rapidly passed through various stages of puzzlement, doubt, concern, and abject gibbering terror as they apparently became the center of a flashing, tightening circle of steel.
** Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld novel Sourcery (1988)
* I never saw any one like him. He is steel! He would go through you like a sword!
** Bram Stoker, on his first meeting of Richard Francis Burton and his wife on 13 August 1878, in Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1907), Vol. 1, p. Page 224
* The magnetism as exhibited in iron is an isolated phenomenon in nature. What it is that makes this metal behave so radically different from all other materials in this respect has not yet been ascertained, though many theories have been suggested. As regards magnetism, the molecules of the various bodies behave like hollow beams partly filled with a heavy fluid and balanced in the middle in the manner of a see-saw. Evidently some disturbing influence exists in nature which causes each molecule, like such a beam, to tilt either one or the other way. If the molecules are tilted one way, the body is magnetic; if they are tilted the other way, the body is non-magnetic; but both positions are stable, as they would be in the case of the hollow beam, owing to the rush of the fluid to the lower end. Now, the wonderful thing is that the molecules of all known bodies went one way, while those of iron went the other way. This metal, it would seem, has an origin entirely different from that of the rest of the globe. It is highly improbable that we shall discover some other and cheaper material which will equal or surpass iron in magnetic qualities.
** Nikola Tesla, "The Problem With Increasing Human Energy: With Special References To the Harnessing Of The Sun's Energy", Century Illustrated Magazine, (June 1900).

## See also

* Chemistry
* Civil engineering
* Iron