50 Quotes by Gene Kranz

To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in trying, we did not give it our best effort

Let's work the problem, people. Let's not make things worse by guessing.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.

That is our job, to live with this risk, and some days it's bad.

In 1960, ... the Cape looked like an oil field, with towering structures, dirt, and asphalt roads newly carved out of the palmetto scrub. The alligators were reluctantly surrendering to the onslaught of newly arrived civilization. If you didn't have a good sense of direction, you were in trouble.

I think everyone, once in his life, should be given a ticker-tape parade.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily.

There is no achievement without risk.

Failure is not an option.