W. Edwards Deming Quotes

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

England never felt claustrophobic for me at all. I think it would feel more difficult for me if I lived in mainland Europe. America I think is really easy because Los Angeles has film stars everywhere and musicians and Santa Barbara a lot of people have homes there even if they don't live there. You are kind of inconsequential, no one cares.

I think the strangest thing probably is when I went to Japan, and I don't know what the hell I was eating, but there was this one thing that seemed to be in a lot of soups and things there - I always called it pond scum. It looked exactly like the green stuff that floats on top of a pond. I would say, "Oh my God, this has pond scum in it!" I would eat it, to be polite, because we were usually with Japanese people and I didn't want to gag or spit it out or anything. And I still don't know what it was.

When you work with new people, I think that it throws all of the matters into relief, because you have to explain yourself every time. It's like crossing a new border. They want to see your documents.

I think there's a need for somewhat of a mindset change. We need to have a consistent external focus. We've always had the research labs. We've always had the resources to be innovative, and we've been innovative in a number of businesses. But, in any big company, you have to constantly push people to look at markets and customers, rather than look internally at themselves.

Some people don't have an open mind, and when I was traveling to different places I think I found it hard to enjoy things. You know, I come from a great city where there are lots of things happening, and if you end up in a small town where you don't have all those things you can feel the difference. Somewhere along the way, though, I think I learned to appreciate the difference.

We enjoyed such amazing success on Sex and the City. You don't expect success on that level, it was such a big deal, and it was so intense and wonderful that it is hard for anything else to live up to it, quite frankly. So now I just try to have fun and work with interesting people. I think that there is a perception that certain films won't be popular. So it was great that The Devil Wears Prada did really well.

I think the Europeans are a lot more spontaneous, more artistic to some degree. But I don't think they have the technical talent we do here in the states. Here people have been trained much more specifically - they know exactly what they're doing. The Europeans are perhaps slower, but in the end damn near as good.

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

I know how hard it can be to communicate in a different country, find your way around, and deal with the mentality of other people and different cultures.

Learning organizations organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.

I think a lot of the time people assume that their values are universal. And they don't understand which aspects of their values are actually universal and which aspects are very specific.

If you go to Europe, public bathrooms have any-gender sink areas and stalls for everyone to use. This is completely reasonable. It potentially involves the destruction of the urinal industry, which I think people would be happy to see go away.

I took movement classes that I wore my double-breasted suits to. I worked on my elocution because people spoke differently then. I was really trying to toe the line. I think that if I had spoken exactly the way that people spoke back then, it probably would have alienated people.

I think clearly Europe has a lot to worry about. When I was working at the CIA - and I always worked with a lot of European services - they always were very condescending toward the United States, saying that we are so racist vis-à-vis blacks and other people.

I'm opposed to wearing headscarves in public places. That's not France. There's something I just don't understand: the people who come to France, why would they want to change France, to live in France the same way they lived back home?

I think that every country presents its own particular challenges, different cultures, different histories, different religions, different people. And different ethnic make-ups in those countries present different challenges.

I do think British tailoring is the best. French people hate me when I say that, but I do think it's true.

I will say, though, that San Francisco is a very friendly city. It's the kind of place where people smile at you and you can strike up conversations on the street, so there's always an adjustment when I come back to New York. If I smile at someone on the street in New York, then they think there's something up - like, "Why is she smiling?"

I really like to discover a new culture, a new country, a new rhythm of living. I really, really like that. I think that's the most enriching thing, for my nature, because I like the psychology of people.

I don't really think that audiences are that much different. I think that a fan is the same whether you are from here or from Japan - you come to a show because you like the music. I don't really see much of a difference anywhere.

Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.

I left the Midwest thinking I didn't fit in. But when I got to New York, I realized how truly Midwestern I was.

My first few weeks in America are always miserable, because the tastes I am cursed with are all of a kind that cannot be gratified here, and I am not enough in sympathy with our gross public to make up for the lack on the aesthetic side. One's friends are delightful; but we are none of us Americans, we don't think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass-house, the most displaced and useless class on earth!

I'm always pointing things out to native New Yorkers that I think are weird about this place and their culture and all that. But I feel like my friends and family from California feel like I've totally "become a New Yorker."