Henry Petroski Quotes

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.

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

What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of design is still to obviate failure, and thus it is critical to identify exactly how a structure may fail. The computer cannot do this by itself . . .

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.

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 never believed 9/11, because I had engineering training at GA Tech, and I could tell when a building is being blown up by explosives. Any fool can look at those films and see the buildings aren't falling down, they're blowing up.

How can we get the most from every mistake we make?

A pattern is either right or wrong...it is no stronger than its weakest point.

When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.

If I fail, at least I will have failed my way.

The failure-dichotomy principle: failure is good. Failure is not an option. Balance those in your brain.

Mistakes don't scare me or bother me. If I feel like I made the same mistake twice, then I feel like I've really screwed up. But if I make one mistake and learn from it, hey, to me in the game of life it's just as important to know what doesn't work as what does. So I think mistakes are a good thing.

It is a common mistake to think of failure as the enemy of success. Failure is a teacher-a harsh one, but the best. Pull your failures to pieces looking for the reason. Put your failure to work for you.

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest steppingstones to success. No other element can do so much for a man if he is willing to study them and make capital out of them. Look backward. Can't you see where your failures have helped you?

Failure hurts pretty bad. But when you got good people around you they remind you that failure is actually just a lesson. It's how not to walk so you don't fall again.

Statistics is, or should be, about scientific investigation and how to do it better, but many statisticians believe it is a branch of mathematics. Now I agree that the physicist, the chemist, the engineer, and the statistician can never know too much mathematics, but their objectives should be better physics, better chemistry, better engineering, and in the case of statistics, better scientific investigation. Whether in any given study this implies more or less mathematics is incidental.

In an arch each single stone which, if severed from the rest, would be perhaps defenceless is sufficiently secured by the solidity and entireness of the whole fabric, of which it is a part.

When new pages are sent to editors and see rejection, we should ask for the reasons. We must study the reasons for failure and learn. It's not about struggle with our limitations or with public or the publishers. It's more about treating it like in aikido; the strength of the attack is used to defeat him with the same effort.

Admit to and make yourself accountable for mistakes. How can you improve if you're never wrong?

Cultivate the ability to make decisions and think alone. Do not be afraid of failure, but learn from it.

I do believe it is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself.

It's too bad failures don't give seminars. Wouldn't that be valuable? If you meet a guy who has messed up his life for forty years, you've just got to say, 'John, if I bring my journal and promise to take good notes, would you spend a day with me?'

Failure is an event, it is not a person.

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest of all the arts.