Quotes by Henry Petroski

About Henry Petroski:

Henry Petroski is an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he is also a prolific author. Petroski has written over a dozen books – beginning with To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985) and including a number of titles detailing the industrial design history of common, everyday objects, such as pencils, paper clips, and silverware. He is a frequent lecturer and a columnist for the magazines American Scientist and Prism. His most recently published book is To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure.
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Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration at best and failure at worst.

Henry Petroski

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 of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

Henry Petroski

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.

Henry Petroski

Failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Henry Petroski

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 failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure can occur, we are more likely to produce successful ...

Henry Petroski

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

Henry Petroski

Many of the familiar little things that we use every day have typically evolved over a period of time to a state of familiarity. They balance form and function, elegance and economy, success and failure in ways that are not only acceptable, but also ...

Henry Petroski

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

Henry Petroski

Although engineers want always to make everything better, they cannot make anything perfect. This basic characteristic flaw of the products of the profession's practitioners is what drives change and makes achievement a process rather than simply a g...

Henry Petroski

Many new technologies come with a promise to change the world, but the world refuses to cooperate.

Henry Petroski

Too much redesign has to do more with fad and fashion than with fitness and function. It is change for the sake of change. Such redesign is not only unnecessary, it is all too often also retrogressive, leading to things that work less effectively tha...

Henry Petroski

I'm a firm believer that no matter how small an object is, you can find interesting things out about it and its history.

Henry Petroski

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.

Henry Petroski

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 th...

Henry Petroski

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.

Henry Petroski

Any design, whether it's for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.

Henry Petroski

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

Henry Petroski

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

Henry Petroski

Design is nothing if not decision making.

Henry Petroski

Because every design must satisfy competing objectives, there necessarily has to be compromise among, if not the complete exclusion of, some of those objectives, in order to meet what are considered the more important of them.

Henry Petroski

Author Bio

  • NameHenry Petroski
  • DescriptionAmerican Professor and Author
  • BornFebruary 6, 1942
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionCivil Engineer; Engineer
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship