Life & Wisdom Quote by Norman Ralph Augustine

Bad products arent cheap mistakes; theyre expensive commitments. Norman Ralph Augustine’s line snaps because it reverses a comforting myth in business culture: that failure is the budget option and excellence is the luxury upgrade. In his telling, mediocrity is what you get when an organization pays full price for all the hard parts - salaries, tooling, meetings, factory time, supply chains, marketing - and then chooses, through drift or denial, to squander them.

The intent is managerial, almost prosecutorial. Augustine isn’t moralizing about taste; he’s indicting systems. “It costs a lot” points to real, compounding costs: rework, warranty claims, returns, reputational damage, regulatory exposure, and the silent tax of customer churn. A “bad product” isn’t merely one that ships; it’s one that keeps billing you after launch, in support calls and crisis comms, in demoralized teams and risk-averse cultures that calcify after public embarrassment.

The subtext is aimed at leaders who treat quality as a discretionary line item. By framing badness as costly, Augustine smuggles in a demand: invest earlier, not louder. Spend on design, testing, and honest feedback loops before the organization spends twice on fixes and apologies.

Context matters: Augustine comes out of aerospace and defense-adjacent worlds where “bad” isn’t a quirky MVP; it can be catastrophic, litigated, or lethal. The aphorism works because it’s a cold bath for the “move fast” reflex: you’re paying either way. The only choice is whether the money buys craft or chaos.