Henry Petroski Quotes & Sayings

“Successful design is not the achievement of perfection but the minimization and accommodation of imperfection.”

“All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it requires an ensemble of correct assumptions and valid calculations.”

“The same aspirations to celebrate and uplift the spirit that drove the Egyptians to build the pyramids are still driving us. The things we're doing differ only in magnitude.”

“Any design, whether it's 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 is a meaningless number.”

“It has been said, by engineers themselves, that given enough money, they can accomplish virtually anything: send men to the moon, dig a tunnel under the English Channel. There's no reason they couldn't likewise devise ways to protect infrastructure from the worst hurricanes, earthquakes and other calamities, natural and manmade.”

“An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.”

“As engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world - not just study it.”

“Design is nothing if not decision making.”

“It seems to be a law of design that for every advantage introduced through redesign, there is an accompanying unintended disadvantage.”