W. Edwards Deming Quotes

The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.

Business requires understanding financial matters, but management is different from running the financial aspects of the business - it requires understanding complex systems, how they operate, the nature of organisations, what happens when people interact in groups and how to motivate and guide people.

Just because you know doesn't mean they know.

What you don’t know can be your greatest asset.

I don't know enough to be incompetent.

I know everything except myself.

Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.

I know what I do not know.

There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing about.

You always get exaggerated notions of things you don't know anything about.

The less people know, the more they yell.

We know no more than we did in 1975 - and that's not good

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

It is not possible to know what you need to learn.

organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up until he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they lay him to rest.

What you don’t know keeps you poor.

I know too much and not enough

Being a president is being a CEO, essentially.

Innovative efforts should never report to line managers charged with responsibility for ongoing operations. The new project is an infant and will remain one for the foreseeable future, and infants belong in the nursery. The 'adults', that is, the executives in charge of existing businesses or products will have neither the time nor understanding for the infant.

There is no remedy for the inefficiency of public management.

The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.

Management's job is to optimize the whole system.

There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.