This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
The principle that where there is fear, there will be wrong figures.
Individual | Judgment | Meaning | Principles | Relationship | Style | System | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
That's all window dressing. That's not fundamental. That's not getting at change and the transformation that must take place. Sure we have to solve problems. Certainly stamp out the fire. Stamp out the fire and get nowhere. Stamp out the fires puts us back to where we were in the first place. Taking action on the basis of results without theory of knowledge, without theory of variation, without knowledge about a system. Anything goes wrong, do something about it, overreacting; acting without knowledge, the effect is to make things worse. With the best of intentions and best efforts, managing by results is, in effect, exactly the same, as Dr. Myron Tribus put it, while driving your automobile, keeping your eye on the rear view mirror, what would happen? And that's what management by results is, keeping your eye on results.
Design | Improvement | System |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.
Individual | Need | System | Work | Learn |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.
Interdependent | System | Work |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
On the Continent, every attempt to substitute a lighter punishment for death was fiercely denounced as a direct violation of the Divine law. Indeed, some persons went so far as to question the lawfulness of strangling the witch before she was burnt. Her crime, they said, was treason against the Almighty, and therefore to punish it by any but the most agonizing deaths was an act of disrespect to Him. Besides, the penalty in the Levitical code was stoning, and stoning had been pronounced by the Jewish theologians to be a still more painful death than the stake.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do your best.
Control | People | Responsibility | Self-improvement | System |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
It is leadership's responsibility to give detailed specifications. Train people until they are in statistical control (until they are achieving as much as they can within the limits of the system you are using). Create teams that develop an esprit. Make personal self-improvement a company goal.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
Management’s job. It is management’s job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre.
System |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
What is the variation trying to tell us about a process, about the people in the process?
Interdependent | System | Talking | Work | Value |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
A system cannot understand itself.
People | Responsibility | System | Understand |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system.
System | Understand |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.
System |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
When men have appreciated the countless differences which the exercise of that judgment must necessarily produce, when they have estimated the intrinsic fallibility of their reason, and the degree in which it is distorted by the will, when, above all, they have acquired that love of truth which a constant appeal to private judgment at last produces, they will never dream that guilt can be associated with an honest conclusion, or that one class of arguments should be stifled by authority.
W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as revealed religion. They are theories more or less rational which uncivilized men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilized men believe that they believe.
Mankind | Philosophy | Religion | Spirit | Success | System |
As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The crisis in Germany has only begun. It will inevitably end in the transfer of political power to the German proletariat. The Russian proletariat is following events with the keenest attention and enthusiasm. Now even the blindest workers in the various countries will see that the Bolsheviks were right in basing their whole tactics on the support of the world workers' revolution.
Aims | Ideas | Individual | Method | Organization | Present | Struggle | System | Work |