Quotes by : Henry Petroski

Science is about knowing engineering is about doing.

Failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation.....

Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can....

Many of the familiar little things that we use every day have typically evolved over a period of time....

The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the....

Because they are so humbled by their creations, engineers are naturally conservative in their expectations....

You can almost say that a design error is a human error because, after all, it's we humans who do the....

Design is nothing if not decision making.

Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration....

No design, no matter how common or seemingly insignificant, is without its adamant critics as well as....