Henry Petroski Quotes

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

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.

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

Always beware an unsigned architectural design.

My first book, 'To Engineer Is Human,' was prompted by nonengineer friends asking me why so many technological accidents and failures were occurring. If engineers knew what they were doing, why did bridges and buildings fall down? It was a question that I had often asked myself, and I had no easy answer.

I would have tested the furniture if they'd asked me.

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

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

How can any company know if its processes, products, people are safe? Only if everyone is watching and telling the truth. The first part can be assumed; the second cannot.

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple.

I love criticism. Equitable Life went down because management wouldn't brook criticism, but if you are in business, you have to hear what's going wrong.

Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

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.

Most of the work performed by a development engineer results in failure.

One of the big failures for the big auto companies is that even the CEO and the top management often don't understand design and manufacturing. As a CEO, you have to make decisions; you need to have knowledge.

If you don't fix latent failures in your system, you're asking for trouble.

Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.

When a house is being built which is to be made as strong as possible, the building takes place in fine weather and in calm, so that nothing may hinder the structure from acquiring the needed solidity.

As a producer you have creative control, and that's what is so exciting about it. At the end of the day, if you have made a film it's totally your responsibility, and if it works it's your responsibility and if it doesn't it's also your responsibility.

Well-building hat three conditions. Commodity, firmness, and delight.

We’ve got to get the bad operators out of business so that the good operators can be rewarded for investing in safety.

In any endeavor, you have to understand your tolerance for risk. What's a failure you can afford?

We are constantly auditing our supply chain. Making sure that safety standards are - are, you know, are the highest. We're making sure that working conditions are the highest.

Manufacturers must accept responsibility for their customers' safety.