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Henry Petroski

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

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Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.

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Everything we do is designed, whether we're producing a magazine, a website, or a bridge. Design is really the creative invention that designs everything.

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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.

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Successful design is not the achievement of perfection but the minimization and accommodation of imperfection.

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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 failure in ways that are not only acceptable, but also admirable.

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As engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world — not just study it.

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