Henry Petroski Quotes

41 quotes in 669 categories

• The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.
• Engineers are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable; that they catch…
• Any design, whether its for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.
• I emphasize that virtually every engineering calculation is ultimately a failure calculation, because without a failure criterion against which to measure the calculated result, it…
• All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it requires an ensemble…
• What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of design is still to obviate failure, and thus it…
• A failed structure provides a counterexample to a hypothesis and shows us incontrovertibly what cannot be done, while a structure that stands without incident often…
• Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them…
• There's so much written about the Titanic, and it's hard to separate what's fact and what's fiction. My understanding is that the way the Titanic…
• No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.
• The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past…
• 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…
• I relax by looking at things and reading about things. Even the simplest thing can reveal a great deal about the world around us. It…
• I was always told that I was good in mathematics, and I guess my grades and standardized test scores supported that. My worst subjects were…
• Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.
• Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.
• Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece…
• Companies selling a product play down its vulnerability and emphasize its robustness. But only after technology leaves the dock is it really tested. For human…
• Failures are much more dramatic than successes, and people like drama. I think this is why automobile races draw such crowds. People expect spectacular crashes,…
• When something succeeds, we learn little more from it than that it did succeed. When something fails, however, we are driven to try to understand…

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