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

Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.

Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don’t have as much to sell.

Export anything to a friendly country except American management.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

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

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

If you don’t understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance.

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

I am forever learning and changing.

The big problems are where people don’t realise they have one in the first place.

Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.

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

No one knows the cost of a defective product – don’t tell me you do.

You can not define being exactly on time.

Nothing that rest on some contradictory basis shall succeed or last in the long run (“ne saurait réussir ou durer, à la longue”, Fr.); all that involve (or imply…) a contradiction is fatally destined, early or late, to disintegrate and disappear.

It must be all the same to the citizens (“ressortissants”, Fr.) of a country that their governing (those in power) speak such language or such other (“telle langue ou telle autre”, Fr.).

As long as men will not be freed from their errors and delusions, humanity will not be able to go towards (“marcher vers”, Fr.) the accomplishment of its true destinies.

There is nothing wrong with being well off as long as money has a social and ethical value and is not the object of one’s own greed.

Buy me a drink, sing me a song; take me as I come, cause I can’t stay long.

Likewise that it must be all the same to them that these adhere to such or such religion, so long as a full (or complete) liberty is equally garantee for everyone.

I long to create something that can’t be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.

I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.