Henry Petroski Quotes

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

My training and my inclination is to invent.

I'd been taking things apart and inventing things since I was a little kid… I still have memories as a child trying to really understand how things work.

Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.

I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing about these things satisfies my curiosity about the made world while at the same time giving me an opportunity to design a new explanation for the processes that shape it.

As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control.

From a very young age, I liked to take apart things. All of my Christmas gifts would wind up in a million pieces. I actually recall taking apart my dad's lawnmower three times to understand how combustible engines work.

Design and technology should be the subject where mathematical brainboxes and science whizzkids turn their bright ideas into useful products.

You can be creative in anything - in math, science, engineering, philosophy - as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

I decided to be an inventor when I was five. My parents had given me a few various enrichment toys like erector sets, and for some reason I had the idea that if I put things together just the right way, I could create the intended effect.

Humans have always used our intelligence and creativity to improve our existence. After all, we invented the wheel, discovered how to make fire, invented the printing press and found a vaccine for polio.

Tech, in the sense of... putting things together, that goes back beyond memory for me.

I have a fondness for technology. It's great to spend hours puttering around with mechanical things gotten from junkyards and visualizing what their use might be. Especially if you come across a gadget or tool and you don't know what it is and you try to figure it out. I'm fascinated by processes, whatever they might be.

Studying engineering was natural for me; I was always interested in technology and building things.

If I look into my past, I was definitely into inventors. I was into stories of Edison and Tesla and da Vinci and all these guys making stuff in their garage.

The way to solve problems in the world is to become scientists and technologists and build things that haven't been built before and discover things that people really don't know about.

I liked the challenge of designing and building things, figuring out how something works and how to make it better or apply it in a different way.

I was always fascinated by how things work and learning about them.

I love working with technology because it allows me to follow my imagination and to invent new things.

Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.

The first time you do something, it's science. The second time, it's engineering. The third time, it's just being a technician. I'm a scientist. Once I do something, I want to do something else.

We must not be afraid to push boundaries; instead, we should leverage our science and our technology, together with our creativity and our curiosity, to solve the world's problems.

I'm not a designer, I'm an inventor.

I was always into science fiction as a kid. I loved science and tinkering with things.