A. W. F. Edwards Quotes

The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain - stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment - over the long term.

Management by results is confusing special causes with common causes.

When people try to do what they can not do, they wish to give up.

We must satisfy our customers.

A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

The most important figures for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.

Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.

People copy examples and then they wonder what is the trouble. They look at examples and without theory they learn nothing.

Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea.

High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.

The camel has his virtues - so much at least must be admitted; but they do not lie upon the surface.

It's not supposed to be easy. It's not supposed to be driving down the interstate.

I will be a model prisoner, as I have been a model citizen

Concentrate on the things that matter to you.

I think that it is our intention to deny cancer any control over us.

Everybody has their burdens, their grief that they carry with them.

I make it my rule, to lay hold of light and embrace it, wherever I see it, though held forth by a child or an enemy.

Love is the sum of all virtue, and love disposes us to good.

Nothing is more certain than that there must be an unmade and unlimited being.

Resolved, to confess frankly to myself all that which I find in myself, either infirmity or sin; and, if it be what concerns religion, also to confess the whole case to God, and implore needed help.

Each of my records has a different focus, a different theme.

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.

Ridicule may be the evidence of with or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth.

Apothegms are the wisdom of the past condensed for the instruction and guidance of the present.

The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.

Where duty is plain delay is both foolish and hazardous; where it is not, delay may be both wisdom and safety.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

To be good, we must do good; and by doing good we take a sure means of being good, as the use and exercise of the muscles increase their power.

There is often as much independence in not being led as in not being driven.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

Transformation is not automatic. It must be learned; it must be led.

If you destroy the people of a company, you do not have much left.

Management is prediction.

All models are wrong; some models are useful.

Nobody should try to use data unless he has collected data.

You can not hear what you do not understand.

Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

Without theory there is nothing to modify or learn.

The greatest losses are unknown and unknowable.

Knowledge needs to be a verb.

Monetary rewards are not a substitute for intrinsic motivation.

There must be consistency in direction.

Hard work and best efforts will not by themselves dig us out of the pit.

When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.

Anybody can achieve gains in quality by slowing down production. That is not what we are talking about.

Let us ask our suppliers to come and help us to solve our problems.

Management does not know what a system is.

There is very little evidence that we give a hoot about profit.

The aim should be to work on the method of management.

One of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches, is this: do your work well and then be ready to depart when God shall call.