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Infallible Quotes by Henry Petroski

1 Infallible quote by Henry Petroski

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…

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Henry Petroski has 41 quotes on this site. A few more worth reading:

The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the…
Engineers are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable;…
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…
All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it…
What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of design is still to obviate failure,…
A failed structure provides a counterexample to a hypothesis and shows us incontrovertibly what cannot be done, while a structure that stands…
Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall…
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…
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…
I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing…

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But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity… — Mikhail Bakunin
An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured. — Konrad Adenauer
An evangelical is somebody who, first of all, has a very high view of Scripture, believes it's an infallible message from God. — Tony Campolo
Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the… — Tony Campolo
Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches. — Thomas Aquinas
Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four,… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Be yourself and think for yourself, and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the inclusions… — Elbert Hubbard
As to sagacity, I should say that his judgement respecting the warmest place and the softest cushion in a room is infallible,… — Thomas Huxley
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself. — Henry A. Kissinger
To preserve yourself as the center of the world, to stay your own best authority on everything, your own expert on all… — Chuck Palahniuk
All Science is necessarily prophetic, so truly so, that the power of prophecy is the test, the infallible criterion, by which any… — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon… — Thomas Hobbes

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