An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.

Any design, whether it's for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.

I know no way of judging the future but by the past.

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.

You can only be sure of what you've done in the past and what you are doing in the present, but never on things you can do in the future

We have to know the truth about the past to discover out future.