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Famous Speeches | All Topics | Fill-In Quotations |
Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity.
Quality is not a program that can be simply imposed on an operation; instead it is a way of operating that permeates a business and the thinking of its employees.
Quality is not a thing. It is an event.
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
Quality control was treated as a fad here, but it's been part of the Japanese business philosophy for decades. That's why they laugh at us.
For lots of big companies, their brand is worth so much to them that they can't endanger their reputation for being a quality company without really endangering their business performance.
I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such a quantity. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual, while subservient to the mass, retains some distinguishing features. A crowd of people, birds, insects, or leaves is a mysterious assemblage of variants of certain prototype. A riddle of nature's abhorrence of exact repetition or inability to produce it. Just as the human hand cannot repeat its own gesture, I invoke this disturbing law, switching my own immobile herds into that rhythm.
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
The common question that gets asked in business is,why?That's a good question, but an equally valid question is,why not?
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called itChops
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it
Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called itAutumn
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.
Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called itInnocence: A Question
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly
That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called itAbsolutely NothingBecause that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.
Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don't have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
What's worked for me is not quitting and being passionate about what I do and not giving up - and when I don't believe in myself, turning to others who believe in me.
Defeat doesn't finish a man - quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.