David A. Bednar Quotes

Repetition creates pattern. If I have a hundred of these, a hundred of those, it doesn't make any difference what these and those are. If I can repeat anything, I have the possibility of a pattern from hickory nuts and chicken eggs, shards of glass, branches. It doesn't make any difference.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

One of my primary objects is to form the tools so the tools themselves shall fashion the work and give to every part its just proportion.

A shot is a lever; it's all it is. You don't open a car door differently each time. A car door is efficient - it opens and closes. So is a shot.

Shoe design is like architecture - with the finest structure and tight, precise seams, it suits my obsessive neatness.

We want a system that creates the same exact sandwich, very rapidly and very consistently, every single time.

Uniformity is the friend of scalability.

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.

I have an obsession with details and pattern.

My job the same as carpenter. What kind of house you want to build? What kind of food you want to make? You think your ingredients, your structure. Simple.

Scientific management promised to replace rules of thumb with accurate measurements.

One must strike the right balance between speed and quality.

The genius idea of industrialism was the concept of the Model T: In exchange for something cheap and well-made, we'd forgo unique, lovely design.

My work is always very geometric.

When I diced vegetables, it was painstaking work to make sure that every single piece looked the same: 1/4-inch cubed for small, 3/4-inch cubed for large. It's a matter of practice and precision.

It is always better to be inefficient and correct than to be incorrect and efficient.

With human inspectors, it's difficult to get even the same person to make consistent judgments.

I think complexity is beautiful.

I think my love of form is especially informed by my background, whether this is creating a wonderful silhouette in a dress or finding the perfect shape for a bowl or the 'just so' angle of a table leg.

The more you can keep your action and your mind and the ball you are delivering as simple as you can nothing can go wrong.

Even the details of a rifle, which are nothing but mechanical, if they are made carefully, with attention, become beautiful, satisfying.

Having a routine makes for a better professional.

It is always cheaper to do the job right the first time.

It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.

Everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.