248 Quotes by W. Edwards Deming

I am not reporting things about people. I am reporting things about practices.

Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge.

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

Short-term profits are not reliable indicator of performance of management. Anybody can pay dividends by deferring maintenance, cutting out research, or acquiring another company.

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

Zero defects is a super highway going down the tube.

People generally want to do the right thing, but in a large organization, they frequently don’t really understand what is the right thing.

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

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