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The Quality Yearbook
Every edition of The Quality Yearbook includes a section we call "Quotes on Quality." These quotes, from many different sources, provide food for thought on what enlightened management entails. The fact is that insightful comments on human behavior and understanding apply to every type of human endeavor, including life in organizations. For this reason, the wisdom of philosophers and poets can apply as easily to the activity of managing as the thoughts of management experts. Thus, we present this eclectic selection of quotes—from
various editions of the yearbook—on what we might think about and do when we seek
to be effective, wise, and happy—on the job and otherwise.
Click on the words below to see quotes on that subject: The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties. This exercise must occupy a complete lifetime. One swallow does make a spring, nor does one fine day. Excellence is a habit, not an event. —Aristotle Value equals benefits received for burdens endured. —Leonard L. Berry Good wares make good markets. —Nicholas Breton, English poet, 1555-1625 Quality is the degree of excellence at an acceptable price and the control of variability at an acceptable cost. —Robert A. Broh I am easily satisfied with the best. —Winston Churchill Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it presents the wise choice of many alternatives. —Willa A. Foster Good is not good where better is expected. —Thomas Fuller If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep the streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a streetsweeper who did his job well. —Martin Luther King, Jr. A business should quickly stand on its own based on the service it provides society. Profits should be a reflection not of corporate greed but a vote of confidence from society that what is offered by the firm is valued. —Konosuke Matshushita It's a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the very best you will very often get it. —W. Somerset Maugham I think quality control is an oxymoron. True quality needs space to breathe. If quality is built in, then where's the need for control? Why on earth would you want to control quality? It should be allowed to run rampant. —Hal F. Rosenbluth What is essential is invisible to the eye. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Return to quote topics
Thoughts on individual leadership behaviors that bring about the success of all. Desire is the key to motivation, but it's the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence—that will enable you to attain the success you seek. —Mario Andretti A wise man sometimes changes his mind, but a fool never. —Arabic Proverb A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. —James Callaghan I should rather men should ask why my statue is not set up than why it is. —Cato the Elder (quoted by Plutarch) If you lead the people with correctness, who will dare not to be correct? —Confucius Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can. —Ralph Waldo Emerson It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do." —Ralph Waldo Emerson The last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. —Viktor Frankl We must be the world we want to create. —Ghandi The humility which comes from others having faith in you. —Dag Hammerskjöld Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together. —Jesse Jackson Example is always more efficacious than precept. —Samuel Johnson The probability that the bowman's arrow hits the deer does not lie in the arrow or the deer. It lies in the bowman's mind. —Bart Kosko The most important wings on an airplane are on the pilot. —T. Allen McArtor (FAA Administrator) Being a visionary leader is not about giving speeches and inspiring the troops. How I spend my day is pretty much the same as how any executive spends his day. Being a visionary leader is about solving day-to-day problems with my vision in mind. —Bill O'Brien Where example keeps pace with authority, power hardly fails to be obey'd. —William Penn Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it's the only thing. —Albert Schweitzer Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. —Lucius Annaeus Seneca (the younger) I know how to listen when clever men are talking. That is the secret of what you call my influence. —Hermann Sudermann A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so they can get on with their jobs. —Robert Townsend Return to quote topics
Thoughts of people on the management and implementation of quality practices and attitudes. A man is known by the company he organizes. —Ambrose Bierce Shelving hard decisions is the least ethical course. —Adrian Cadbury Deliberate with caution but act with decision and promptness. —Charles Caleb Colton There are only two ways to be quite unprejudiced and impartial. One is to be completely ignorant. The other is to be completely indifferent. Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided. —Charles P. Curtis It is useless to make a formal decision with which group members informally disagree. —William G. Dyer In every affair, consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it. —Epictetus Indecision is often worse than wrong action. —Gerald Ford Nothing chastens a planner more than the knowledge that he will have to carry out the plan. —General James Gavin Quality control is applicable to any kind of enterprise. In fact, it must be applied in every enterprise. —Kaoru Ishikawa A good rule in organizational analysis is that no meeting of the minds is really reached until we talk of specific actions or decisions. We can talk of who is responsible for budgets, or inventory, or quality, but little is settled. It is only when we get down to the action words—measure, compute, prepare, check, endorse, recommend, approve—that we can make clear who is to do what. —Joseph M. Juran One of life's most painful moments comes when we must admit that we didn't do our homework, that we are not prepared. —Merlin Olsen If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll get nothing done. —Norman Vincent Peale People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and, if they can't find them, make them. —George Bernard Shaw The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. —Alfred North Whitehead Seek simplicity and distrust it. —Alfred North Whitehead Return to quote topics
Thoughts that suggest the attributes of a quality culture. It's probably not love that makes the world go around but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievements of shared and private goals.... Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners. —Fred Allen (former chairman, Pitney-Bowes) Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. —Matsuo Basho (16th century Japanese poet) Excellence nourishes the soul. —Leonard L. Berry Management creates an empowered state of mind in the organization by treating employees as part-owners of the business and expecting them to act like owners. —Leonard L. Berry If I understood too clearly what I was doing, where I was going, then I probably wasn't working on anything very interesting. —Peter Carruthers (physicist) A fool can learn from his own experience; the wise learn from the experience of others. —Democritus No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings. —Peter Drucker In order for me to look good, everybody around me has to look good. —Doris Drury Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. —Thomas Edison Problems are only opportunities in work clothes. —Henry J. Kaiser Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it presents the wise choice of many alternatives. —Willa A. Foster You've got to have an atmosphere where people can make mistakes. If we're not making mistakes, we're not going anywhere. —Gordon Foward (president, Chapparal Steel) God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper. —R. Buckminster Fuller The ability to learn faster that your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage. —Arie P. de Geus The productivity of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organization. —Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard True artists ship. —Steven Jobs You don't have to preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate this product. The reason isn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says he couldn't. —Walter Lippmann Our goal should be minimum standardization of human behavior. —Douglas McGregor Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse. —Henry Mintzberg One of the rules of caution is not to be too cautious. —Bahya ib Paquda Excellent firms don't believe in excellence, only in constant improvement and constant change. —Tom Peters Men are wise not in proportion to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. —George Bernard Shaw It is very difficult to get someone to believe something when his salary depends on his not believing it. —Upton Sinclair New ideas ... are not born in a conforming environment. —Roger von Oech Return to quote topics
Thoughts on the idea of serving customers. The first time formal customer research is done, executives frequently are surprised by the sizeable percentage of customers who defect for service-related reasons. —Leonard L. Berry A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one. —Henry Ford He that plants trees loves others besides himself. —Thomas Fuller High quality means pleasing customers, not just protecting them from annoyance. —David Garvin Reengineering posits a radical new principle: that the design of work must be based not on hierarchical management and the specialization of labor but on end-to-end processes and the creation of value for the customer. —Michael Hammer All of management's efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction. —Masaaki Imai The purpose of a business is to create and keep customers. —Theodore Levitt Treat the customer as an appreciating asset. —Tom Peters Remember, some customers will want to be chauffeured, others will want the wheel themselves. Some will speed, other will take it slow. One way or another, all will be in the driver's seat. It's just a question of which companies they will pay for the ride. —Faye Rice The business process starts with the customer. In fact, if it is not started with the customer, it all too many times abruptly ends with the customer. —William Scherkenbach I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found out how to serve. —Albert Schweitzer Profits are the organization's measure of the benefits and quality it has delivered to customers. So are losses. —John Woods When you understand that your success is directly tied to the world of which you are a part, then service to others is just what makes sense. —John Woods Return to quote topics
Thoughts on the nature and value of training. They know enough who know how to learn. —Henry Adams When an archer misses the mark, he turns and looks for the fault within himself. Failure to hit the bull's-eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim—improve yourself. —Gilbert Arland The truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believ'd. —William Blake We are forced to rely on our people, which is why we put so much emphasis on training them. —Henry Block When asked what learning was most necessary, he said, "Not to unlearn what you have learned." —Diogenes The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. —Albert Einstein Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes. —J.A. Froude Like a good parent, the good mentor allows the person they are coaching to make —Francis Gouillart and James Kelly You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. —Sam Levenson Never chide with anger, but instruction. —William Penn Management will recognize the need for education and retraining when they realize that people are an asset and not an expense. —William Scherkenbach The great aim of education is not knowledge but action. —Herbert Spencer First study the science, and then practice the art which is born of that science. —Leonardo da Vinci Believe one who has tried it. —Virgil It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. —John Wooden Things are hard before we know how to do them; afterwards, they are easy. —John Woods Return to quote topics
Thoughts on working together to achieve common goals. Nothing creates more self-respect among employees than being included in the process of making decisions. —Judith Bardwick Participative managment is, simply stated, involving the right people at the right time in the decision process. —Wayne Barlow Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production. —Edward Bellamy The ratio of We's to to I's is the best indicator or the development of a team. —Lewis D. Eigen A competitive culture endures by tearing people down. —Jules Henry For people to treat each other as teammates, they have to believe it is in their best interests to cooperate; they must be more concerned with how the system as a whole operates than with optimizing their own little piece. —Brian L. Joiner Contrary to what you think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees. —Alfie Kohn When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality. —Joe Paterno "Great people" don't equal "great teams." —Tom Peters Return to quote topics
Variety of thoughts on the idea of processes and managing them, as well as some thoughts on reengineering. The unfinished is nothing. —Henri Frédérick Amiel Forget goals. Value the process. —Jim Bouton Probabilities direct the conduct of the wise man. —Cicero The value of an idea lies in using it. —Thomas Edison No great thing is created suddenly. —Epictetus, Roman Stoic philosopher It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise. —Goethe Detect and fix any problem in a production process at the lowest stage possible. —Andrew S. Grove Reengineering eliminates work, not jobs or people. —Michael Hammer It is not employees who cause the majority of errors; they are just unwilling pawns who operate in the environment often controlled by obsolete and cumbersome operating systems. —H. James Harrington If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe. —Abraham Lincoln It is profitable wisdom to know when we have done enough: Much time and pains are spared in not flattering ourselves against probabilities. —William Penn Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing,, layout, processes, and procedures. —Tom Peters The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing a thing exactly right. —Edward Simmons Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity.... Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. —John Updike Return to quote topics
Thoughts on making measurements, collecting data, and understanding and misunderstanding them. It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on memory alone. —Ralph Waldo Emerson The professional's grasp of the numbers is a measure of the control he over the events that the numbers represent. —Harold Geneen It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. But I am not sure that figures show us whether it is being ruled well or badly. —Goethe Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can't measure something, you can't understand it. If you can't understand it, you can't control it. If you can't control it, you can't improve it. —H. James Harrington In quality control, we try as far as possible to make our various judgments based on the facts, not on guesswork. Our slogan is "Speak with facts." —Katsuya Hosotani Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. —Aldous Huxley Measures are an innovation that changed a world of innocent and noble simplicity into one forever filled with dishonesty. —Flavius Josephus Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action. —Joseph M. Juran You get what you measure. Measure the wrong thing and you get the wrong behaviors. —John H. Lingle The most savage controversies are about those matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. —Bertrand Russell When dealing with numerical data, approximately right is better than precisely wrong. —Carl G. Thor A fact may blossom into a truth. —Henry David Thoreau Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. —Mark Twain Return to quote topics
Thoughts on change and improvement. Obstacles are things people see when they lose sight of their goals. —Anonymous He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator. —Francis Bacon Every organization has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does. —Peter F. Drucker The future never just happened. It was created. —Will and Ariel Durant Yesterday's miracle is today's intolerable condition. —Lewis D. Eigen In this world the passage of time brings increasing order. Order is the law of nature. If time is an arrow, that arrow points to order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation. —Albert Einstein Good, better, best Never let it rest Until the good becomes the better And the better becomes the best. —Elementary school rhyme Only the provisional endures. —French Proverb At the end of every day of every year, two things remain unshakable, our constancy of purpose and our continuous discontent with the immediate present. —Robert C. Goizueta Beaver: Gee, there is something wrong with just about everything, isn't there, Dad? Ward: Just about, Beav. —Leave it to Beaver If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. —Oliver Wendell Holmes The ideas of control and improvement are often confused with one another. This is because the quality control and quality improvement are inseparable. —Kaoru Ishikawa We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible. —George Santayana The only way to even approach doing something perfectly is through experience, and experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. —Oscar Wilde Without deviation, progress is not possible. —Frank Zappa Return to quote topics
Thoughts on the importance of communication and on its nature. Managers who are skilled communicators may also be good at covering up real problems. —Chris Argyris The truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believ'd. —William Blake You must call each thing by its proper name or that which must get done will not. —A. Harvey Block What is conceived well is expressed clearly, and the words to say it arrive with ease. —Nicolas Boileau An individual without information cannot take responsibility; an individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility. —Jan Carlzon Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent. —Dionysius the Elder Knowledge is power. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not hiding it. —Peter F. Drucker How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things but by how well we are understood. —Andrew S. Grove A social collectivity is patterned communicative behavior; communicative behavior does not occur within a network of relationships but is that network. —Leonard C. Hawes To think justly, we must understand what others mean: to know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds. —William Hazlitt The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. To be taken seriously depends entirely upon what is being said. —Hubert Humphrey From listening comes wisdom; from speaking comes repentance. —Italian proverb True words are not fine. Fine words are not true. —Lao Tzu A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us. —Friedrich Nietzsche If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. —Mark Twain Whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid. —Oscar Wilde Our words do not describe things but our relationship to things. In this lies the heart of misunderstanding. —John Woods Return to quote topics
Thoughts on what "vision" means. It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out. —Henri Bergson The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. —Winston Churchill Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are a means to mobilize resources and energies of the business for the making of the future. —Peter F. Drucker What makes life weary is the want of a motive. —George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) I skate to where I think the puck will be. —Wayne Gretzky I find the great thing in this world is not where we stand, as in the direction we are moving. —Oliver Wendell Holmes Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. —William James The obscure we see eventually; the completely apparent takes longer. —Edward R. Murrow A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing with him the image of a cathedral. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry If people don't have their own vision, all they can do is sign up for someone else's. This result is compliance, never commitment. —Peter M. Senge If there is genuine potential for growth, build capacity in advance of demand, as a strategy for creating demand. Hold the vision, especially as regards assessing key performance and evaluating whether capacity to meet potential demand is adequate. —Peter M. Senge Return to quote topics
Thoughts on the nature of learning and its place in managing and in life. Chaos often breeds life, while order breeds habit. —Henry Adams True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence. —Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) The important thing about science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. —William Bragg A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. —Edmund Burke For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences. —Miguel de Cervantes Only the hand that erases can write the true thing. —Meister Eckhart Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. —Umberto Eco The very essence of human progress is applying new knowledge in new ways, continuously making the old way of doing things obsolete. Organizations don't make progress, people do. The organization is just a vehicle for human cooperation. Its form adapts as the needs of the people adapt, and peoples' needs change with the progressive acquisition and application of new knowledge. —Francis Gouillart and James Kelly Desire to know why and how, curiosity, which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight is the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure. —Thomas Hobbes The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions. —Anthony Jay Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. —F.P. Jones Mistakes are the portals of discovery. —James Joyce Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. —Vernon Law (baseball pitcher) Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. —Walter Lippman The best way to view a present problem is to give it all you've got, to study it and its nature, to perceive within it the intrinsic interrelationships, to discover (rather than to invent) the answer to the problem within the problem itself. —Abraham Maslow An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted. —Arthur Miller Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood. —Henry Miller I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a "learning experience." Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a "learning experience." It makes me feel less stupid. —P.J. O'Rourke ... by chance you will say, but chance only favors the mind which is prepared. —Louis Pasteur In a sluggish system, aggressiveness produces instability. Either be patient or make the system more responsive. —Peter M. Senge A man should never be ashamed to own up when he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. —Jonathan Swift The "silly question" is the first intimation of a some totally new development. —Alfred North Whitehead It's not whether we have learned from history—we have—but our awareness of what we have learned. —John Woods Return to quote topics
A variety of thoughts that suggest what happens when people do a poor job of practicing quality management and what the wrong stuff includes. Torture the data long enough, and they will confess to anything. —Anonymous It's a poor workman who blames his tools. —Anonymous Ineffective leaders often act on the advice and counsel of the last person they talked to. —Warren G. Bennis The first job of a leader is define the vision for the organizationþbut without longevity of leadership, you can have the "vision of the month club." —Warren G. Bennis The first corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. —Georges Bernanos No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its power of acting and reasoning as fear. —Edmund Burke The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS. —Winston Churchill Many of the obstacles for change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status. —John Dewey How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. —Benjamin Disraeli Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done. —Peter F. Drucker Carelessness is worse than theft. —Gaelic proverb Our business world has accepted errors as a way of life. We live with them, we plan for them, and we make excuses for them. They have become part of the personality of our business. Our employees quickly recognize our standards and create errors so that they will not disappoint us. —H. James Harrington Many companies expect that after this round of downsizing is over, they will be able to resume their regular management practices. It was these management practices, however, that created the need for downsizing. —Ronald L. Heilmann Irrationally held truths may be more harmful that reasoned errors. —Thomas H. Huxley Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth. —Douglas Jerrold Fanaticism: Redoubling your efforts after your objective has been forgotten. —Joseph M. Juran Goal setting has traditionally been based on past performance. This practice has tended to perpetuate the sins of the past. —Joseph M. Juran He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than illumination. —Andrew Lang All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it. —John Locke A boss's mere expression of an opinion can be interpreted as a decision—even a direct order—by a staff member caught in the clutches of risk avoidance. —Alec Mackenzie The greatest disservice that Harvard Business School has ever played on corporate America is management by objectives. —James McManus He who knows only his own case knows little of that. —John Stuart Mill An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty. —Henry Mintzberg The prime occupational hazard of a manager is superficiality. —Henry Mintzberg Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goals. —Friedrich Nietzsche The hardest knife ill-used doth lose its edge. —William Shakespeare Return to quote topics
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