Henry Petroski Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“Luxury, not necessity, is the mother of invention. Every artifact is somewhat wanting in its function, and that is what drives its evolution.”

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

“Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration at best and failure at worst.”

“Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.”

“Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.”

“We can't simply blame the engineers when things go wrong because, no matter how well they plan, things don't always go according to plan.”

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

“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 when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.”

“I employ case studies of failure into my courses, emphasizing that they teach us much more than studies of success. It is not that success stories cannot serve as models of good design or as exemplars of creative engineering. They can do that, but they cannot teach us how close to failure they are.”

“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 was designed, the emphasis was placed on surviving a head-on collision.”