Henry Petroski

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

“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 goal.”

“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.”

“If I could go upstairs and write every day, I would be happy. I don't need recreation.”

“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.”

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

“As long as there are things to wonder about, there are stories to be written about them. That makes me happy, because writing about things seems to be my thing.”

“It seems to be a law of design that for every advantage introduced through redesign, there is an accompanying unintended disadvantage.”

“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 designs.”