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

In 1945, the world was in a shambles. American companies had no competition.

My mother was my biggest role model. She taught me to hate waste. We never wasted anything.

The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.

Quality’ means what will sell and do a customer some good – at least try to.

Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.

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

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

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

People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets – even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.

We are here to make another world.

The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.

Profit in business comes from repeat customers.

Innovation comes from the producer – not from the customer.

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

All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else.

So nobody really thought much about quality. Why should they? The world bought everything America produced. It was a prescription for disaster.

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we’re all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.

They don’t come off. I walk into a lot of very high-level boardrooms now, and I present to distinguished conferences, but these bracelets remind me of the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met.