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.
Design Study She

About This Quote

About Henry Petroski

Henry Petroski was a 20th-century American engineer and academic. Henry Petroski was an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he was also a prolific author. Read more on Wikipedia →

More quotes by 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
Successful Engineering

“Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.”
— Henry Petroski
Achieving Engineering

“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...”
— Henry Petroski
Future Past Successful

“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 fa...”
— Henry Petroski
Success Time Little Things

“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...”
— Henry Petroski
Engineering Measure Number

“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 exempl...”
— Henry Petroski
Success Good Design
View all quotes by Henry Petroski →

Related Quotes

“Think of the billions of trillions of snowflakes, and the billions of trillions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in every single one of them. It makes you wonder, doesnt it, who wrote the laws for ...”
— Alan Bradley, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
design nature reality

“The Fibonacci Sequence turns out to be the key to understanding how nature designs... and is... a part of the same ubiquitous music of the spheres that builds harmony into atoms, molecules, crystal...”
— Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration of Science and Philosophy
design fibonacci-sequence golden-ratio nature

“Principles that drive equilibrium in nature's design also power human design.”
— Maggie Macnab, Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design
design ethics nature

“I have a neuroscience background - that's what my doctorate is in - and I was trained to study hormones of attachment, so I definitely feel my parenting is informed by that.”
— Mayim Bialik
Study Feel Attachment

“I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.”
— Don DeLillo
Study Years Anything

“Don't try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie. Study computers instead.”
— Jackie Chan
Study Try Like

“She has her own brand of strength,brought to the surface by the dim glow of the streetlight and the whisper of night air on her skin.”
— Holly Bourne
she strength

“The toddler must say no in order to find out who she is. The adolescent says no to assert who she is not.”
— Louise J. Kaplan
She Find Say

“You label somebody 'New Age,' and that's automatic mockery: 'She cannot possibly be a serious thinker.'”
— Marianne Williamson
She You New