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

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.

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

You can not define being exactly on time.

Customer expectations? Nonsense. No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic tire, the VCR, or the CD.

People don’t like to make mistakes.

Quality is everyone’s responsibility.

Customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.

You get another person who operates only in an African language and there are many persons who operate only in African languages; he or she is excluded from all the goodies that come with English.

The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it.

I only know how to play two ways: reckless and abandon.

When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Understanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age.

I can only do what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss.

When you are a successful business person, you are only as good as your team. No one can do every deal alone.