Edwards Deming Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

Innovation comes from the producer -- not from the customer.

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

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

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

Lack of knowledge . . . that is the problem.

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

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

Any manager can do well in an expanding market.

The emphasis should be on why we do a job.

Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.

You can not define being exactly on time.

Let us ask our suppliers to come and help us to solve our problems.

There is a penalty for ignorance. We are paying through the nose.

It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of activity or methods. It must always relate directly to how life is better for everyone... The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment.

It does not happen all at once. There is no instant pudding.

Management by results is confusing special causes with common causes.

We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes.

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

You can not inspect quality into the product; it is already there.

Confusing common causes with special causes will only make things worse.

Off we go to the . . . Milky Way!

Does experience help? NO! Not if we are doing the wrong things.

A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system.

If you stay in this world, you will never learn another one.

Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options.

The job can't be finished only improved to please the customer.