W. Edwards Deming

All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

If you don't understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance. The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.

What should be the aim of management? What is their job? Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

Meeting specifications is not enough.

Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.

Lack of knowledge... that is the problem.

Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don't have as much to sell. Your workers don't want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That's inflation.

Understanding variation is the key to success in quality and business.

Transformation is not automatic. It must be learned; it must be led.

Quality is everyone's responsibility.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

Zero defects is a super highway going down the tube.

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.

It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.

The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.

In 1945, the world was in a shambles. American companies had no competition. So nobody really thought much about quality. Why should they? The world bought everything America produced. It was a prescription for disaster.

People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

You should not ask questions without knowledge.

No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.

American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don't know what to copy.

The emphasis should be on why we do a job.

Customer expectations? Nonsense. No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic tire, the VCR, or the CD. All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

It is not enough to do your best you must know what to do and THEN do your best.

We are here to make another world.

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.

Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.

The prevailing - and foolish - attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he's managing. A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he's put in charge anyway.

I predicted in 1950 that in five years, manufacturers the world over would be screaming for protection. It took only four years.

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.

Any manager can do well in an expanding market.

You can not define being exactly on time.

Experience by itself teaches nothing...Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory there is no learning.

You can only elevate individual performance by elevating that of the entire system.

Improve quality, you automatically improve productivity.

Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.

Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.

It is not enough to do your best you must know what to do and then do your best.

Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual's contribution far more than the individual himself.

When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.