“You should not ask questions without knowledge.”

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.

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.

It should be known that Israel is based on treachery.

My country and me, we are part of this region, we’re not separated. We cannot discuss it as Syria or as me ; it should be as part, as a whole, as comprehensive. That’s how we have to look at it.

Like pictures, men should be judged by their merits and not by their defects.

In the matter of dress one should always keep below one’s ability.

Revolution should be Syrian, cannot be revolution imported from abroad.

No one should have a key that turns a billion locks. It shouldn’t exist.

Every woman should shave her head once in her life, to experience what it feels like.

If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.