W. Edwards Deming Quotes

A goal without a method is nonsense.

People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning.

A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.

To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge, knowledge for leadership of transformation.

Management by results - like driving a car by looking in rear view mirror.

Nothing happens without personal transformation.

If someone can make a contribution to the company he feels important.

A leader's job is to help his people.

Foremost is the principle that the purpose of consumer research is to understand the customer's needs and wishes, and thus design product and service that will provide better living for him in the future. A second principle is that no one can guess the future loss of business from a dissatisfied customer.

Without theory we can only copy.

A leader knows who is outside of the system and needs special help.

You can not plan to make a discovery. You do not plan innovation.

Meeting specifications is not enough.

Quality begins with the intent, which is fixed by management.

Failure of management to plan for the future and to foresee problems has brought about waste of manpower, of materials, of the machine-time, of all which raise the manufacturer's cost and price that the purchaser must pay

Mere allocation of huge sums of money for quality will not bring quality.

The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system can not understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside.

Knowledge needs to be a verb.

Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.

Managers don't like giving appraisals, and employees don't like getting them. Perhaps they're not liked because both parties suspect what the evidence has proved for decades: Traditional performance appraisals don't work.

Experience by itself teaches nothing.

The moral is that it is necssary to innovate, to predict the needs of the customers, and give him more. He that innovates and is lucky will take the market.

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.