"No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction."

Charles Kendall Adams
American Educator and Historian

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

John Quincy Adams
Sixth President of the United States

"If you talk about change but don't change the reward and recognition system, nothing changes."

Paul Allaire
Former CEO of Xerox Corporation

"Of all our human resources, the most precious is the desire to improve."

Anonymous

"Yesterday is history; tomorrow is a mystery; today is a gift - that is why it is called the present."

Anonymous

"Set your goals high enough to inspire you and low enough to encourage you."

Anonymous

"Take charge of your attitude. Don't let someone else choose it for you."

Anonymous

"Because we don’t know what is really important to us, everything seems important. Because everything seems important, we have to do everything. Other people, unfortunately, see us as doing everything, so they expect us to do everything. Doing everything keeps us so busy, we don’t have time to think about what is really important to us."

Anonymous

"A certificate does not make you certified. Attitude, performance, commitment to self and team - these and a certificate make you certified."

Anonymous

"Partners are not like jumper cables; don’t leave them in the trunk and wait for an emergency."

Anonymous

"The walls of the box from which we are asked to think out of are thickened by years of experience."

Anonymous

"It is better for an organization’s competitiveness and survival to have a large group of people systematically working on small problems every day than a small group periodically working on big problems."

Anonymous

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Aristotle
Greek Philosopher

"What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing."

Aristotle
Greek Philosopher

"Quality is not an act. It is a habit."

Aristotle
Greek Philosopher

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."

Aristotle
Greek Philosopher

"The only constant is change."

Isaac Asimov
Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Historian, Biochemist, Textbook Writer, Humorist

"Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading."

Isaac Asimov
Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Historian, Biochemist, Textbook Writer, Humorist

"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."

Isaac Asimov
Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Historian, Biochemist, Textbook Writer, Humorist

"The single most important thing you can do to dramatically improve your presentations is to have a story to tell before you work on your PowerPoint file."

Cliff Atkinson

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. "

Francis Bacon
English Philosopher, Statesman, and Author

"Truly world-class firms are always examining their business processes and continuously seeking solutions to improve in key areas, such as lead time reduction, cost cutting, exceeding customer expectations, streamlining processes, shortening time to market for new products, and managing the global operation."

Daniel Baldwin
Founder of Engent

"I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not."

Lucille Ball
American Comedienne, Film, Television, Stage and Radio Actress, Model, Film and Television Executive

"When we open a new store we give every hourly employee 120 hours of training. Someone said, 'What if you spend all that money and time and they leave?' And I said, 'What if you don’t and they stay?'"

Pal Barger
Chairman and Founder of Pal’s Sudden Service

"You have the right to exploit your success stories to break resistance. We human beings are driven by habit, history, and the rearview mirror. If you want to break direction, you have to shake people up, not by threatening them, not by offering a bonus, but by illustrating in a similar situation what can be accomplished."

Percy Barnevik
Former CEO and later Chairman of Asea Brown Boveri (ABB)

"The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success."

Henry Ward Beecher
Protestant Clergyman, Abolitionist

"A person can have the greatest idea in the wold - completely different and novel - but if that person can't convince enough other people, it doesn't matter."

Gregory Berns

"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else."

Yogi Berra
Former Major League Baseball Player and Manager

"We must accept human error as inevitable — and design around that fact."

Donald Berwick
MD, MPP, is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

"We are guests in our patients' lives."

Donald Berwick
MD, MPP, is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

"Some is not a number. Soon is not a time."

Donald Berwick
MD, MPP, is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

"Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time."

Josh Billings
Humorist and Lecturer

"Having an exciting destination is like setting a needle in your compass. From then on, the compass knows only one point - its ideal. And it will faithfully guide you there through the darkest nights and fiercest storms."

Daniel Boone
American Pioneer and Hunter

"Operationalization is the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make the concept measurable in form of variables consisting of specific observations."

Dr. Percy Williams Bridgman
1946 Nobel Prize in Physics Winner

"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn. It can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow."

Charles Brower

"First, stop thinking of 'the environment' and 'profitability' as two separate entities. For a company to be successful, you have to stop the devisiveness. They automatically marry."

Bill Brunson
Facilities Manager, Apple Computer

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

Warren Buffet
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

"Define your business goals clearly so that others can see them as you do."

George Burns
Entertainer

"The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible."

George Burns
Entertainer

"Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people - your family, friends, and coworkers, and even strangers you meet along the way."

Barbara Bush
Former First Lady of the United States

"You don't just luck into things as much as you would like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it is friendships or opportunities."

Barbara Bush
Former First Lady of the United States

"The potential of this nation is as boundless as the imagination and drive of the American people. . . . Quality management is not just a step. It must be a new style of working. Even a new style of thinking. The dedication to quality and excellence is more than good business; it’s a way of life."

George H. W. Bush
41st President of the United States

"We are seeing some challenges and some changes in American business, American enterprise, but the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is a reminder of things that must never change: the passion for excellence, the drive to innovate, the hard work that goes with any successful enterprise."

George W. Bush
43rd President of the United States

"If you want to compete with me, and you are doing batch and I am doing Lean, then over time I am going to kill you. I am going to take your market share. You just don’t have a chance."

Art Byrne
Former CEO of The Wiremold Company

"Hospitals have difficult circumstances - everybody is squeezing the health care dollar, so you have to run the business better. That's what I'd like to contribute. Then I'll know I've really given something back."

Art Byrne
Former CEO of The Wiremold Company

"You can’t build a great company without great people. But how do you know them when you see them? Over the past few years, a number of companies in a wide range of industries — from airlines to steel, computers to hotels — have asked themselves what separates their winners from their losers, good hires from bad, and they all arrived at the same answer: what people know is less important than who they are. Hiring, they believe, is not about finding people with the right experience; it’s about finding people with the right mind-set. These companies hire for attitude and train for skill."

Peter Carbonara

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."

Andrew Carnegie
Businessman and Philanthropist

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."

Dale Carnegie
American Writer and Lecturer and the Developer of Famous Courses in Self-Improvement, Salesmanship, Corporate Training, Public Speaking and Interpersonal Skills

"Nothing within a horizon can have a fixed definition. Every step taken alters the horizon, changes the field of vision, causing us to see what had been thus far circumscribed as something quite different."

James Carse
Professor Emeritus, New York University

"The key to change... is to let go of fear."

Rosanne Cash
American Singer-Songwriter and Author

"If you want one year of prosperity, grow seeds.
If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.
If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people."

Chinese Proverb

"To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping."

Chinese Proverb

"Plans are things that change."

Fujio Cho
Chairman of Toyota Motor Company

"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time -- a tremendous whack."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Politics are almost as exciting a war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"With integrity, nothing else counts. Without integrity, nothing else counts."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Say what you have to say and, the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending, sit down."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"First he read his speech, second he read it badly, third it wasn't worth reading."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician & Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which highlights customer satisfaction, workforce empowerment, and increased productivity, has come to symbolize America’s commitment to excellence."

Bill Clinton
42nd President of the United States

"The moment of impact. The moment of impact provides potential for change. It has ripple effects far beyond what we can predict. Sending some particles crashing together. Making them closer than before, while sending others spinning off into great ventures. Landing them where you've never thought you’d find them. That's the thing about moments like these. You can’t, no matter how hard you try, control how it’s gonna affect you. You just gotta let the colliding parts go where they may. And wait. For the next collision."

Leo Collins (Channing Tatum)
From the Movie "The Vow"

"I see the Baldrige process as a powerful set of mechanisms for disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action to create great organizations that produce exceptional results."

Jim Collins
Author of the Book, "Good To Great"

"The kind of commitment I find among the best performers across virtually every field is a single-minded passion for what they do, an unwavering desire for excellence in the way they think and the way they work. Genuine confidence is what launches you out of bed in the morning, and through your day with a spring in your step."

Jim Collins
Author of the Book, "Good To Great"

"Some managers are uncomfotable with expressing emotion about their dreams, but it's the passion and emotion that will attract and motivate others."

Jim Collins
Author of the Book, "Good To Great"

"In any given application, the first statistical model is rarely the last or best one."

Joseph Conklin
Mathematical Statistician at the U.S. Department of Energy

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

Calvin Coolidge
30th president of US (1872 - 1933)

"When you go to Gemba, it's an opportunity to sincerely thank everyone involved for their work. The funny thing is, as the leader, I also would like to thank them for allowing me to support them. I can't give direct care, but,contrary to the old style CEO walking around to be seen, it is a privilege for me to see the team. Every time I am in gemba it reminds me of why, just like clinicians, I went into health care. It feels good."

Kathryn Correia
President and CEO of Healtheast
Former President of Appleton Medical Center and ThedaClark Medical Center

"If you don’t bake DFSS into your New Product Introduction Process, and hold teams accountable to the use of DFSS at Phase Gates, your deployment will fail."

David Cote
CEO Honeywell

"Personal leadership is not a singular experience. It is, rather, an ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"We may be very busy, we may be very efficient, but we will also be truly effective only when we begin with the end in mind."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"Often we are so busy with sawing that we forget to sharpen the saw."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"Trust is the glue that holds everything together. It creates the environment in which all of the other elements — win-win stewardship agreements, self-directing individuals and teams, aligned structures and systems, and accounatability — can flourish."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"The Inside-Out approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self / with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"I think that [respect for people] is of profound importance because it means you are caring and you trust them to do the right thing."

Stephen Covey
Co-Chairman, Franklin Covey Company

"It's not what you do once in a while, it's what you do day in and day out that makes the difference."

Jenny Craig
An American Weight Loss Guru and Founder of Jenny Craig, Inc.

"If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Quality has to be caused, not controlled."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Selecting the right person for the right job is the largest part of coaching."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"You have to lead people gently toward what they already know is right."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Slowness to change usually means fear of the new."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"In a true zero-defects approach, there are no unimportant items."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Being convinced one knows the whole story is the surest way to fail."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Making a wrong decision is understandable. Refusing to search continually for learning is not."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Successful people breed success."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Very few of the great leaders ever get through their careers without failing, sometimes dramatically."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Quality is the result of a carefully constructed cultural environment. It has to be the fabric of the organization, not part of the fabric."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Eliminating what is not wanted or needed is profitable in itself."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Change should be a friend. It should happen by plan, not by accident."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Just being honest is not enough. The essential ingredient is executive integrity."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"The cost of quality is the expense of doing things wrong."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"It is always cheaper to do the job right the first time."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Most things don't work like they are supposed to work."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Problems breed problems, and the lack of a disciplined methon of openly attacking them breeds more problems."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"We must define quality as conformance to requirements."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"The customer deserves to receive exactly what we have promised to produce."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Zero defects is the attitude of defect prevention. It means 'do the job right the first time."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"It only takes one bad bit of data in the chain to disturb the effectiveness and accuracy."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Don't get lost in statistical swamps."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"If you don't know what the defect level is, how do you know when to get mad?"

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"A good follower wants the same results as the leader wants."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Reality is the ultimate criterion."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

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

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"Quality is free. It's not a gift, but it is free. What costs money are unquality things- all the actions that involve not doing jobs right the first time."

Philip Crosby
Businessman, Author, and Quality Guru

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."

Leonardo Da Vinci
Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Musician, Scientist, Mathematician, Engineer, Inventor, Anatomist, Geologist, Botanist and Writer.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Leonardo Da Vinci
Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Musician, Scientist, Mathematician, Engineer, Inventor, Anatomist, Geologist, Botanist and Writer.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

Charles Darwin
British Naturalist

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

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"There is no economy in having one operation produce a part and another separate the good ones from the bad ones."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Confusing common causes with special causes will only make things worse."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

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

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Management by results is confusing special causes with common causes. "

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Each system is perfectly designed to give you exactly what you are getting today."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"The biggest cost of poor quality is when your customer buys it from someone else because they didn't like yours."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"You must not run your Organization as a functional hierarchy. You must understand it as a "System"."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Measurement without the opportunity to improve is harassment!"

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"If you don't know how to ask the right questions, you discover nothing."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"You can not inspect quality into the product; it is already there."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Does experience help? NO! Not if we are doing the wrong things."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Quality starts in the boardroom."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

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

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"We must understand variation."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Innovation comes from the producer, not from the customer."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"No requirement of industry is so much neglected as operational definitions."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"A bad system will beat a good person every time."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to -- that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough; action is required."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"One cannot be successful on visible figures alone ... the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"He that expects to quantify in dollars the gains that will accrue to a company year by year for a program for improvement of quality expounded in [Out of the Crisis] will suffer delusion. He should know before he starts that he will be able to quantify only a trivial part of the gain."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"If you wait for people to come to you, you’ll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don’t realize they have one in the first place."

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

Walt Disney
American Film Producer, Director, Screenwriter, Voice Actor, Animator, Entrepreneur, Entertainer, International Icon, and Philanthropist

"All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."

Walt Disney
American Film Producer, Director, Screenwriter, Voice Actor, Animator, Entrepreneur, Entertainer, International Icon, and Philanthropist

"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."

Walt Disney
American Film Producer, Director, Screenwriter, Voice Actor, Animator, Entrepreneur, Entertainer, International Icon, and Philanthropist

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Benjamin Disraeli
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Before you can win, you have to believe you are worthy."

Mike Ditka
Former American Football NFL player, Television Commentator, and Coach

"If things came easy, then everybody would be great at what they did, let's face it."

Mike Ditka
Former American Football NFL player, Television Commentator, and Coach

"If you are determined enough and willing to pay the price, you can get it done."

Mike Ditka
Former American Football NFL player, Television Commentator, and Coach

"Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace."

Mike Ditka
Former American Football NFL player, Television Commentator, and Coach

"Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal."

Mike Ditka
Former American Football NFL player, Television Commentator, and Coach

"The ones who want to achieve and win championships motivate themselves."

Mike Ditka
Former American Football NFL player, Television Commentator, and Coach

"You're never a loser until you quit trying."

Mike Ditka
Former American Football NFL player, Television Commentator, and Coach

"We have learned a great deal in wartime which we can and must carry over to peacetime in that field of industrial activity, which, for lack of a better name, is call "training." During wartime, plants needed to use training in order to supply the needs of the armed forces. Now plants must use training if they are going to survive in competitive situations and if they are going to keep on providing jobs and wages for workers."

Channing Rice (C.R.) Dooley
Director of the Training Within Industry Foundation

"Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"Results is all that separates one company from another."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"Profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but the test of their validity."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"Strategic management is not a box of tricks or a bundle of techniques. It is analytical thinking and commitment of resources to action."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken and written word."

Peter Drucker
Executive Advisor

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year."

John Foster Dulles
U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail."

John Foster Dulles
U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"If we lose sight of people, we lose sight of the very purpose of leadership."

Tony Dungy
Former Professional Football Player and Coach in the National Football League

"Most new supervisors have the technical ability to ensure that staff job assignments are completed, but few are prepared for dealing with the human interactions that are required in a supervisory role."

Deborah Easton
Communication Skills Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University

"Enhanced communication skills of supervisors means fewer errors, less conflict and greater employee buy-in for new initiatives."

Deborah Easton
Communication Skills Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University

"The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-toitiveness; third, common sense."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"To invent, you need a goal, imagination and a pile of junk."

Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Try not to become a man of success but a man of value."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Once you stop learning, you start dying."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"I never allow myself to become discouraged under any circumstances. The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are first, hard work, second, stick-to-ittiveness, third, common sense."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"The future is of greater interest to me than the past, since that is where I intend to spend the rest of my life."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions."

Albert Einstein
Scientist

"The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up."

Dwight Eisenhower
34th President of the United States

"I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone."

Dwight Eisenhower
34th President of the United States

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Essayist, Philosopher, and Poet

"Patience And Fortitude Conquer All Things."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Essayist, Philosopher, and Poet

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Essayist, Philosopher, and Poet

"People only see what they are prepared to see."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Essayist, Philosopher, and Poet

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."

Epictetus
Greek Stoic Philosopher

"It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows."

Epictetus
Greek Stoic Philosopher

"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go."

William Feather
American publisher and author

"Temporary success can be achieved in spite of lack of other fundamental qualities, but no advancements can be maintained without hard work."

William Feather
American publisher and author

"Do not be afraid to make decisions, do not be afraid to make mistakes."

Carly Fiorina
Business Executive, Politician

"Leadership comes in small acts as well as bold strokes."

Carly Fiorina
Business Executive, Politician

"The ability to effectively use knowledge is power. In the business world, the person who can get the data to tell the best story wins!"

Gary Fitzmartin
Registered Corporate Coach, Business Consultant, & Speaker

"No man ever reached to excellence in any one art or profession, without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation."

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
Roman Lyric Poet During the time of Augustus

"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant."

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
Roman Lyric Poet During the time of Augustus

"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it."

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
Roman Lyric Poet During the time of Augustus

"Don't think, just do."

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
Roman Lyric Poet During the time of Augustus

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"We want to get full value out of labour so that we may be able to pay it full value. It is use - not conservation - that interests us."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"If its not adding value; its waste."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"The longer an article is in the process of manufacture and the more it is moved about, the greater its ultimate cost."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"We have never considered any costs as fixed. Therefore we first reduce the price to a point where we believe more sales will result. Then we go ahead and try to make the price. We do not bother about the costs. The new price forces the cost down."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"People see successes that men have made and somehow they appear to be easy. But that is a world away from the facts. It is failure that is easy. Success is always hard. A man can fail easily; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage. The easiest of all wastes and the hardest to correct is the waste of time, because wasted time does not litter the floor like wasted material."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"Don’t ever take the fence down until you know why it was put up."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay."

Henry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company

"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

Anne Frank
Jewish Diarist and Aspiring Writer

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world."

Anne Frank
Jewish Diarist and Aspiring Writer

"People hate change. Change of any kind is a struggle with fear, anger, and uncertainty, a war against old habits, hidebound thinking, and entrenched interests. No company can change any faster than it can change the hearts and minds of its people, and the people who change the fastest and best are those who have no choice."

Robert Frey
President of Cin-Made Corporation

"In business, what distinguishes leaders from laggards and greatness from mediocrity is the ability to uniquely imagine what could be."

Robert Fritz
Author of The Path of Least Resistance

"There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes."

R. Buckminster Fuller
An American Engineer, Author, Designer, Inventor, and Futurist

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."

Galileo Galilei
Italian Physicist, Mathematician, Astronomer and Philosopher

"It's been a challenge, but we've found that we can get substantial results when we ask our suppliers to tell us how things should be done, rather than our telling them to just do it our way."

Kevin Galvin
Director of Electrical/Electronic Component Procurement and Supplier Development, Chrysler Corporation

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

Mahatma Gandhi
Leader of Indian Nationalism in British-Ruled India

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."

Mahatma Gandhi
Leader of Indian Nationalism in British-Ruled India

"If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG. "

Bill Gates
American Business Magnate, Philanthropist, and Chairman of Microsoft

"It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure."

Bill Gates
American Business Magnate, Philanthropist, and Chairman of Microsoft

"As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others."

Bill Gates
American Business Magnate, Philanthropist, and Chairman of Microsoft

"I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act."

Bill Gates
American Business Magnate, Philanthropist, and Chairman of Microsoft

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

Bill Gates
American Business Magnate, Philanthropist, and Chairman of Microsoft

"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."

Bill Gates
American Business Magnate, Philanthropist, and Chairman of Microsoft

"Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"You can't make a recipe for something as complicated as surgery. Instead, you can make a recipe for how to have a team that's prepared for the unexpected."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"Having great components is not enough, and yet we've been obsessed in medicine with components. We want the best drugs, the best technologies, the best specialists, but we don't think too much about how it all comes together."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slip ups, no goofs, everyone pitching in."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"Don't let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn't. Write about it. Ask a patient or a colleague what they think about it. See if you can keep the conversation going."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"In psychology, there's something called the broken-leg problem. A statistical formula may be highly successful in predicting whether or not a person will go to a movie in the next week. But someone who knows that this person is laid up with a broken leg will beat the formula. No formula can take into account the infinite range of such exceptional events."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at."

Atul Gawande
American Surgeon, Author, and Journalist

"The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities."

Michael Gerber
Author, Entrepreneur

"Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did."

Newt Gingrich
American politician and author
Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

"I think the important thing for a CEO to do is to be a vocal supporter and make it known to the leadership team that lean is important."

Dick Giromini
CEO at Wabash National Corp

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."

Arnold Glasgow

"Make your life a mission - not an intermission."

Arnold Glasgow

"The future is the past returning through another gate."

Arnold Glasgow

"Beware of those who laugh at nothing or everything."

Arnold Glasgow

"Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects."

Arnold Glasgow

"The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion."

Arnold Glasgow

"Nothing lasts forever--not even your troubles."

Arnold Glasgow

"The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it."

Arnold Glasgow

"Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope."

Arnold Glasgow

"Cost Accounting is enemy number one of productivity."

Eliyahu Goldratt
Israeli Physicist, Author of "The Goal"

"Make the bottlenecks work only on what will contribute to throughput today … not nine months from now. That’s one way to increase capacity at the bottlenecks. The other way you increase bottleneck capacity is to take some of the load off the bottlenecks and give it to non-bottlenecks."

Eliyahu Goldratt
Israeli Physicist, Author of "The Goal"

"If we reduce batch sizes by half, we also reduce by half the time it will take to process a batch. That means we reduce queue and wait by half as well. Reduce those by half, and we reduce by about half the total time parts spend in the plant. Reduce the time parts spend in the plant and our total lead time condenses. And with faster turn-around on orders, customers get their orders faster."

Eliyahu Goldratt
Israeli Physicist, Author of "The Goal"

"An hour saved at the non-bottleneck is a mirage."

Eliyahu Goldratt
Israeli Physicist, Author of "The Goal"

"An expert is not someone who gives you the answer, it is someone who asks you the right question."

Eliyahu Goldratt
Israeli Physicist, Author of "The Goal"

"Why is there a lock on your suggestion box? Are you afraid that the competing hospital across the street is sending people over to steal your good ideas?"

Mark Graban
Healthcare consultant, speaker, author of "Lean Hospitals" & "Healthcare Kaizen," chief improvement officer at KaiNexus

"It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality."

Harold Greneen
American Businessman
President of the ITT Corporation

"In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: Cash and Experience. Take the experience first. The cash will come later."

Harold Greneen
American Businessman
President of the ITT Corporation

"It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality."

Harold Greneen
American Businessman
President of the ITT Corporation

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

Wayne Gretzky
Canadian Former Professional Ice Hockey Player and Former Head Coach

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

Wayne Gretzky
Canadian Former Professional Ice Hockey Player and Former Head Coach

"Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy."

Wayne Gretzky
Canadian Former Professional Ice Hockey Player and Former Head Coach

"Hockey is a unique sport in the sense that you need each and every guy helping each other and pulling in the same direction to be successful."

Wayne Gretzky
Canadian Former Professional Ice Hockey Player and Former Head Coach

"Most companies don't die because they are wrong; they die because they don't commit themselves. They fritter away their momentum and their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is standing still."

Andy Grove
Former CEO of Intel Corporation

"Creating an environment where the status quo isn’t good enough is key to long-term survival."

Anthony Guerra
Editor-In-Chief, Healthcare Informatics Magazine

"The most important part of the effective process is not the actual development and implementation of a new idea, but the appreciation that it is possible to do things differently."

Anthony Guerra
Editor-In-Chief, Healthcare Informatics Magazine

"World-class performance begins with world-class trust."

Robert Hall
Author, Professor, Founding Member Of The Association For Manufacturing Excellence (AME)

"Tomorrow when you come to work, if it doesn't make the customer happy, move the business forward, and save us money - don't do it."

Reed Hastings
CEO Netflix

"Never mistake motion for action."

Ernest Hemingway
American Author and Journalist

"All things are in a state of flux."

Heraclitus
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

"Nothing is permanent, but change."

Heraclitus
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

"The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way."

Heraclitus
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet."

Theodore Hesburgh
President, University of Notre Dame

"If we are to remain mission focused, as we must be if we are to be relevant in an uncertain age, the abandoning those things that do not further the mission is a leadership imperative."

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"Culture does not change because we desire to change it. Culture changes when the organization is transformed; the culture reflects the realities of people working together every day."

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it."

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"It is the quality and the character of the leader that determines the results and performance."

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"The best part of the character and quality of the leader is expressing who you are in the work you do and how you do it."

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"You should be a living practicing example of what you are preaching."

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"Few leaders are born. We learn to be leaders. We learn by working with other people and working through our philosophy."

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"Does our structure express our people and our mission and what we hope to accomplish, our results?"

Frances Hesselbein
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute
Founder of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation
Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976-1990

"A goal is a dream with a deadline."

Napoleon Hill
American Author

"Don't wait. The time will never be just right."

Napoleon Hill
American Author

"The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does."

Napoleon Hill
American Author

"Edison failed 10, 000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times."

Napoleon Hill
American Author

"Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure."

Napoleon Hill
American Author

"Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit"

Conrad Hilton
American Hotelier and Founder of the Hilton Hotels Chain

"Quality, quality, quality: never waver from it, even when you don’t see how you can afford to keep it up. When you compromise, you become a commodity, and then you die."

Gary Hirshberg
President and CEO, Stonyfield Farm

"The ability to define a business model and then focus on operating it, instead of always changing and coming up with new ideas and solutions, is one differentiating aspect of an entrepreneur and an inventor."

Robert Hisrich
Garvin Professor of Global Entrepreneurship and Director of the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management

"Man's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions."

Oliver Wendell Holmes
American jurist
Justice of U.S. Supreme Court

"Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it."

Lou Holtz
Author, Television Commentator, Motivational Speaker, and former NCAA Football and NFL Head Coach

"I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions."

Lou Holtz
Author, Television Commentator, Motivational Speaker, and former NCAA Football and NFL Head Coach

"I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it."

Lou Holtz
Author, Television Commentator, Motivational Speaker, and former NCAA Football and NFL Head Coach

"Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated."

Lou Holtz
Author, Television Commentator, Motivational Speaker, and former NCAA Football and NFL Head Coach

"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it."

Lou Holtz
Author, Television Commentator, Motivational Speaker, and former NCAA Football and NFL Head Coach

"If its a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission."

Grace Hopper
Admiral

"Wealth isn't always measured in dollar signs. We each have time, talent and creativity, all of which can be powerful forces for positive change. Share your blessings in whatever form they come and to whatever level you have been blessed."

Jon Huntsman
American Businessman and Philanthropist

"A crisis allows us the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn't think we possessed."

Jon Huntsman
American Businessman and Philanthropist

"If you go through the improvement kata process you'll get to where you need to get to. And the more times you do it the better you will get at it."

Jim Huntzinger
President, Lean Summits

"We want to make sure we are in existence 100 years from now, and you can only do that if you innovate. You cannot just tread water and not embrace change because you will die. So, you've always got to be figuring out some way to grow, and that requires being willing to look at things differently."

Mark Hutcheson
Past Virginia Mason Medical Center Board Chair

"Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"Learn what is true in order to do what is right."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation."

Thomas Huxley
English Biologist (Anatomist)

"Lack of trust within an organization saps its energy, fosters a climate of suspicion and second-guessing, completely devastates teamwork, and replaces it with internal politics. The end result is low morale and the consequent low standards of performance."

Koh Boon Hwee
Chairman, DBS Bank Ltd., Former Chairman, Singapore Airlines

"The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter."

Lee Iacocca
Philanthropist, Former CEO of Chrysler Corporation, Former President of Ford Motor Company

"If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s important and then give it all you’ve got."

Lee Iacocca
Philanthropist, Former CEO of Chrysler Corporation, Former President of Ford Motor Company

"The message of the Kaizen Strategy is that not one day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company."

Masaaki Imai
Consultant, Pioneer and Leader in Spreading the KAIZEN Philosophy

"It is impossible to improve any process until it is standardized. If the process is shifting from here to there, then any improvement will just be one more variation that is occasionally used and mostly ignored. One must standardize, and thus stabilize the process, before continuous improvement can be made."

Masaaki Imai
Consultant, Pioneer and Leader in Spreading the KAIZEN Philosophy

"You can't do kaizen just once or twice and expect immediate results. You have to be in it for the long haul."

Masaaki Imai
Consultant, Pioneer and Leader in Spreading the KAIZEN Philosophy

"Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time."

Masaaki Imai
Consultant, Pioneer and Leader in Spreading the KAIZEN Philosophy

"Japanese management practices succeed simply because they are good management practices. This success has little to do with cultural factors. And the lack of cultural bias means that these practices can be – and are – just as successfully employed elsewhere."

Masaaki Imai
Consultant, Pioneer and Leader in Spreading the KAIZEN Philosophy

"The Kaizen Philosophy assumes that our way of life -- be it our working life, our social life, or our home life -- deserves to be constantly improved."

Masaaki Imai
Consultant, Pioneer and Leader in Spreading the KAIZEN Philosophy

"As much as 95% of quality related problems in the factory can be solved with seven fundamental quantitative tools."

Kaoru Ishikawa
University Professor and Influential Quality Management Innovator.

"Quality control starts and ends with training."

Kaoru Ishikawa
University Professor and Influential Quality Management Innovator.

"The ideas of control and improvement are often confused with one another. This is because quality control and quality improvement are inseparable."

Kaoru Ishikawa
University Professor and Influential Quality Management Innovator.

"Quality control is applicable to any kind of enterprise. In fact, Quality Control must be applied in every enterprise."

Kaoru Ishikawa
University Professor and Influential Quality Management Innovator.

"Quality control which cannot show results is not quality control. Let us engage in QC which makes so much money for the company that we do not know what to do with it."

Kaoru Ishikawa
University Professor and Influential Quality Management Innovator.

"The strength of the team is each individual member...the strength of each member is the team."

Phil Jackson
Coach of Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."

Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States

"Teams continue to be key performance units in organizations. Typically teams are tasked with making recommendations or decisions about how the organization should move forward on an important project or solve a problem impacting the business. Improving the performance of teams, and in particular their ability to make decisions, enhances the organization's ability to be competitive and successful."

Bob Jewell
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University

"I want to put a ding in the universe. "

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines. "

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"It takes these very simple-minded instructions—'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number'––but executes them at a rate of, let's say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It's very character-building."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"That's been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful… that's what matters to me."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"This is not a one-man show. What's reinvigorating this company is two things: One, there's a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they’re not losers. What they didn't have was a good set of coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology - not the other way around."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people."

Steve Jobs
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.
American Computer Entrepreneur and Innovator
Previous Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studios

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

Samuel Johnson
English author, Essayist, Lexicographer, Biographer, Poet

"Round numbers are always false."

Samuel Johnson
English author, Essayist, Lexicographer, Biographer, Poet

"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."

Michael Jordan
All Star Basketball Player, Chicago Bulls

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed."

Michael Jordan
All Star Basketball Player, Chicago Bulls

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."

Michael Jordan
All Star Basketball Player, Chicago Bulls

"I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."

Michael Jordan
All Star Basketball Player, Chicago Bulls

"Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen."

Michael Jordan
All Star Basketball Player, Chicago Bulls

"It is most important that top management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere manifestation of interest at the top, little will happen below."

Joseph Juran
Management Consultant, Quality Guru

"What I want to do has no end, since I am on the endless frontier of a branch of knowledge."

Joseph Juran
Management Consultant, Quality Guru

"Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action."

Joseph Juran
Management Consultant, Quality Guru

"Innovation is always a surprise. By definition, it is something no one has thought of before. Its very existence shows that realty is not fixed in predictable patterns. Instead, creative new possibilities can emerge in any field, in any industry. To succeed, we must imagine possibilities outside of conventional categories, envision actions that cross traditional boundaries, anticipate repercussions, take advantage of interdependencies, make new connections, or invent new combinations."

Gary Kaplan
Chairman and CEO, Virginia Mason Medical Center

"Corporate Management Accounting systems are inadequate for today’s environment. Too complex! "

Robert Kaplan
Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

Helen Keller

"In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be."

Lord Kelvin
Irish Mathematician, Physicist, and Engineer

"If you can not measure it, you can not improve it."

Lord Kelvin
Irish Mathematician, Physicist, and Engineer

"To measure is to know."

Lord Kelvin
Irish Mathematician, Physicist, and Engineer

"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced the state of science."

Lord Kelvin
Irish Mathematician, Physicist, and Engineer

"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man."

John Kennedy
35th President of the United States

"Nor problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."

John Kennedy
35th President of the United States

"In short, we must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions."

John Kennedy
35th President of the United States

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."

John Kennedy
35th President of the United States

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

John Kennedy
35th President of the United States

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."

John Maynard Keynes

"I keep six honest serving-men(They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who."

Rudyard Kipling
English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

"Never underestimate the magnitude of the power of the forces that reinforce the status quo."

John Kotter
Author and American Professor

"Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition."

Thomas Kuhn
American Physicist, Historian, and Philosopher of Science

"It is not always easy to do the right thing. But, doing the right thing makes you strong, it builds character, it forces you to make decisions based upon your beliefs and not what other people think. In life, and in business, you have to stand for what you believe in and sometimes you have to stand alone. But, what makes you a leader is having the courage of your convictions."

Queen Latifah
American Rapper, Model and Actress

"Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare."

Patrick Lencioni
Author of "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, Introduction"

"If you want to truly understand something, try to change it."

Kurt Lewin
German-American Psychologist

"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax."

Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President of the United States

"Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition."

Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President of the United States

"I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down..."

Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President of the United States

"Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle."

Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President of the United States

"I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they appear to be true views."

Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President of the United States

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor."

Vince Lombardi
Former Head Coach of the Green Bay Packers

"Having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it."

Vince Lombardi
Former Head Coach of the Green Bay Packers

"Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."

Vince Lombardi
Former Head Coach of the Green Bay Packers

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."

Vince Lombardi
Former Head Coach of the Green Bay Packers

"Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch Excellence."

Vince Lombardi
Former Head Coach of the Green Bay Packers

"Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life."

Joan Lundon
American Journalist, Author and Television Host

"A positive attitude is something everyone can work on, and everyone can learn how to employ it."

Joan Lundon
American Journalist, Author and Television Host

"A fulfilling life is different to each person. You have to acknowledge your dreams, and not just wait for life to happen, and opportunities to come knocking at your door."

Joan Lundon
American Journalist, Author and Television Host

"We compare our environmental expenses to the estimated savings that result from the company's pursuit of environmental leadership. The savings have offset the expenses by approximately two to one."

Diana Lyon
Program Director - Corporate Environmental Affairs, IBM

"We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve. "

Maxwell Maltz
American Cosmetic Surgeon and Author Who Developed Psycho-Cybernetics

"Always reward your long hours of labor and toil in the very best way, surrounded by your family. Nurture their love carefully, remembering that your children need models, not critics, and your own progress will hasten when you constantly strive to present your best side to your children. And even if you have failed at all else in the eyes of the world, if you have a loving family, you are a success."

Og Mandino
Author of "The Greatest Salesman in the World"

"Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!"

Og Mandino
Author of "The Greatest Salesman in the World"

"We all want to meet the demands of war - maximum production through best use of our facilities and talents. But we can also build for the future in meeting the present challenge. The training we give the worker to do a good job for now for war production can be more than an expedient means of getting the job done. It can be suitable to the individual and in line with the antive talen and aspiration. Then it becomes education because theworker placed in the line of work he desires, and trained in accordance with his talen and aspiration, is a growing individual - mentally, morally, and spiritually, as well as technically."

Charles Mann
Served as Chairman of the War Depatment's Committee on Education and Special Training during World War I

"The customer doesn't expect everything will go right all the time; the big test is what you do when things go wrong."

Lord Colin Marshall
British businessman and member of the House of Lords

"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

Somerset Maugham
British playwright, novelist and short story writer.

"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."

Somerset Maugham
British playwright, novelist and short story writer.

"I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice."

Somerset Maugham
British playwright, novelist and short story writer.

"When things are at their worst I find something always happens."

Somerset Maugham
British playwright, novelist and short story writer.

"The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."

John Maxwell
Author; Company Leader

"Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition."

Ed McCabe

"The real message isn't what you say, it's what the other person remembers."

Harry Mills
CEO of The Mills Group, Author, and Mentor on Persuasion for the Harvard Manage/Mentor Program

"In real estate, its location, location, location, in sales, its differentiation, differentiation, differentiation."

Harry Mills
CEO of The Mills Group, Author, and Mentor on Persuasion for the Harvard Manage/Mentor Program

"Difficulty is the one excuse that history never accepts."

Edward R. Murrow
American broadcast journalist

"To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful."

Edward R. Murrow
American broadcast journalist

"The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer."

Edward R. Murrow
American broadcast journalist

"There was a perception that I was going out to catch people, he says. Over time they understand that I just want to see it like a customer. I can do my job better if I have firsthand exposure to the good, the bad and the ugly."

Bob Nardelli
CEO at Home Depot

"Focus on remedies, not faults."

Jack Nicklaus
Professional Golfer "The Golden Bear"

"Sometimes the biggest problem is in your head. You've got to believe you can play a shot instead of wondering where your next bad shot is coming from. "

Jack Nicklaus
Professional Golfer "The Golden Bear"

"Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work."

Jack Nicklaus
Professional Golfer "The Golden Bear"

"For every task performed, the performance standard is: DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME."

Frank Novak
Founder of KAVON International, Inc.

"If you get invited to be part of a team, don't look at it as a burden to get out of, but rather an opportunity to inspire, invigorate, and bring life to the team."

John Novak
President and Trusted Advisor at KAVON International, Inc.
Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Certified Quality Auditor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"A robust internal auditing program shows its presence both at the beginning and end of continual improvement projects. In the beginning, internal audits identify opportunities for improvement, at the end, internal audits provide a mechanism for monitoring the implemented improvement in order to sustain its benefits for the long term."

John Novak
President and Trusted Advisor at KAVON International, Inc.
Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Certified Quality Auditor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"You want continual improvement? Then I challenge every employee in an organization to discard the status quo and ask themselves everyday, "How can I improve my job?", then find a way to make it happen."

John Novak
President and Trusted Advisor at KAVON International, Inc.
Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Certified Quality Auditor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"An ISO 9001 system, properly implemented and diligently adhered to, can become the cornerstone for a world-class company. The foundation established by this system, brings discipline and documentation to the company culture while focusing on customer satisfaction through continual process improvement. "

John Novak
President and Trusted Advisor at KAVON International, Inc.
Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Certified Quality Auditor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"When it comes to continual improvement programs, the biggest mistake is a failure to launch, the biggest hurdle is culture."

John Novak
President and Trusted Advisor at KAVON International, Inc.
Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Certified Quality Auditor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"Don't let the fear of statistics keep you from launching a continual improvement program. The statistics hurdle is easily overcome, going out of business is not."

John Novak
President and Trusted Advisor at KAVON International, Inc.
Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Certified Quality Auditor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"With Lean Six Sigma, the tools are the easy part, changing organizational culture is the hard part."

John Novak
President and Trusted Advisor at KAVON International, Inc.
Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Certified Quality Auditor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch."

Novalis
Author and Philosopher

"The more inventory a company has, ... the less likely they will have what they need."

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"Without standards, there can be no improvement."

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"No goal, regardless of how small can be achieved without adequate training."

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes."

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"The only place that work and motion are the same thing is the zoo where people pay to see the animals move around"."

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"Why not make the work easier and more interesting so that people do not have to sweat? The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people’s creativity. People don’t go to Toyota to 'work' they go there to think."

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced"

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"When you are out observing on the gemba, do something to help them. If you do, people will come to expect that you can help them and will look forward to seeing you again on the gemba."

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"Kaizen is about changing the way things are. If you assume that things are all right the way they are, you can't do Kaizen. So change something!"

Taiichi Ohno
Former Toyota Vice President

"People in your organizations can cope with the truth, however unpleasant. In fact, they hunger for honesty and inclusion. If you’re straight with them, they’ll help you."

Harari Oren
Author Of Leapfrogging the Competition

"In the end, I have found that people like the direct approach. Its much more valuable to them to have a leader who's absolutely clear and open than to have one that soft-soaps or talks in circles."

Bill Parcells
NFL Head Coach

"Supervisors who are well-trained learn to be better leaders and communicate with their employees and colleagues more effectively. Highly trained employees feel more valued, therefore organizations will experience better retention rates."

Ned Parks
Consultant
Public Speaker
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University

"Reward the behaviors that you want repeated and 'ignore' the ones you don't."

Ned Parks
Consultant
Public Speaker
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University

"If you think it – ink it."

Ned Parks
Consultant
Public Speaker
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University

"Its the name on the front of the jersey that matters most, not the one on the back."

Joe Paterno
Head Football Coach at Penn State

"Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy."

Joe Paterno
Head Football Coach at Penn State

"When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality."

Joe Paterno
Head Football Coach at Penn State

"The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital."

Joe Paterno
Head Football Coach at Penn State

"You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional."

Joe Paterno
Head Football Coach at Penn State

"Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart and mind - confidence is the key to all the locks."

Joe Paterno
Head Football Coach at Penn State

"I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom."

George Patton
United States Army Officer

"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."

George Patton
United States Army Officer

"Take calculated risks–that is quite different from being rash."

George Patton
United States Army Officer

"A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow."

George Patton
United States Army Officer

"Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory."

George Patton
United States Army Officer

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

George Patton
United States Army Officer

"An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded."

John Paul II
Pope

"There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment."

Norman Vincent Peale
Author Of "The Power Of Positive Thinking"

"If you want to get somewhere you have to know where you want to go and how to get there. Then never, never, never give up."

Norman Vincent Peale
Author Of "The Power Of Positive Thinking"

"Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast."

Tom Peters
American Writer on Business Management Practices

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."

Pablo Picasso
Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

Plato
Ancient Greek Philosopher

"The real winners in life are the people who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better."

Barbara Pletcher

"The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game."

Karl Popper
Philosopher and a Professor at the London School of Economics

"Successful organizations today know that teams make a big difference in achieving business results. However, not every group is a team and not every team is effective."

John Potkalitsky
KAVON Trusted Advisor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"Compared to regular teams, high-performance teams add value by delivering quicker results, generating more creative, breakthrough solutions to problems and by building a higher level of collaboration to make better decisions."

John Potkalitsky
KAVON Trusted Advisor
Consultant
Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University
Trainer

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

Colin Powell
Former Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Advisor

"Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it."

Colin Powell
Former Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Advisor

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

Ayn Rand
Russian-American Novelist, Philosopher, Playwright and Screenwriter

"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."

Ayn Rand
Russian-American Novelist, Philosopher, Playwright and Screenwriter

"Presentations aren't about the presenter; they are about the audience and what the audience needs. If the presenter is talking too much it's usually a sign that he or she has forgotten who's important."

Simon Raybould
Recognized Expert in Presenting, Author and Speaker

"A leader, once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets rough."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"Facts are stubborn things."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose - somehow we win out."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future. "

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"America’s economic strength depends on industry’s ability to improve productivity and quality and to remain on the cutting edge of technology, and that’s why the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is so important."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away."

Ronald Reagan
40th President Of The United States

"Achieving election-winning government performance begins when city leaders and the mayor work together to create a competitive strategy."

Graham Richard
Former Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana

"One hope is that you will think about what you can do in your community, even if it is just inviting an elected official to lunch and sharing with them your passion about Lean Six Sigma and how it can help the government do a better job."

Graham Richard
Former Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana

"There are only two options regarding commitment. You're either IN or you are OUT. There is no such thing as life in-between."

Pat Riley
NBA Head Coach of the Miami Heat

"The TWI programs have a long track record of dramatically boosting productivity and quality almost wherever they are used. They might well be the most successful supervisor training programs ever developed. Over the last four decades, they have supported the Kaizen efforts of some of the world’s most efficient companies. In particular, they played a central role in the conceptual development of lean production and in instilling its most important principles in the minds of millions."

Alan Robinson
Author, Educator, Consultant

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."

Maria Robinson

"Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different."

Fred Rogers
American Educator, Presbyterian Minister, Songwriter, Author, and Television Host

"In order to succeed, you must know what you are doing, like what you are doing, and believe in what you are doing."

Will Rogers
Actor, Comic, Columnist, Radio Personality

"There is no joy other than the joy of creating. There is no man who is truly alive other than one who is creating. All others are just shadows on the earth with nothing to do with being alive. The joy of living, whether it is love or action, is the joy of creating."

Romain Rolland
French dramatist, Novelist, Essayist, Art Historian, Mystic, and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. "

Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. "

Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States

"Understanding is a two-way street."

Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States

"You must do the things you think you cannot do."

Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States

"Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth."

Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States

"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives."

Theodore Roosevelt
26th President Of The United States

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so the his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt
26th President Of The United States

"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game."

Babe Ruth
American Major League Baseball Player

"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime."

Babe Ruth
American Major League Baseball Player

"You just can't beat the person who never gives up."

Babe Ruth
American Major League Baseball Player

"The scoreboard has nothing to do with the process. Each possession you look across at the opponent and commit yourself to dominate that person. It’s about individuals dominating the individuals they’re playing against. If you can do this…if you can focus on the one possession and wipe out the distractions…then you will be satisfied with the result."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"If you don’t get result-oriented with the kids, you can focus on the things in the process that are important to them being successful."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"It’s not the end result. Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"One thing we need to do differently in motivating players and helping them be successful is not to talk about results. Our goal next year is to be a dominant football team."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"The process of our 2004 national title began 400 days earlier with a loss to Arkansas. Every second of that process led us to a championship."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"Success doesn’t come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"The scoreboard has nothing to do with the process. Each possession you look across at the opponent and commit yourself to dominate that person. It’s about individuals dominating the individuals they’re playing against. If you can do this…if you can focus on the one possession and wipe out the distractions…then you will be satisfied with the result."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"I’m tired of hearing all this talk from people who don’t understand the process of hard work—like little kids in the back seat asking ‘Are we there yet?’ Get where you’re going 1 mile-marker at a time."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"Focus on the process of what it takes to be successful."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish, we’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"We don’t talk about winning championships, we talk about being champions."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"The process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful, we try to define the standard that we want everybody to sort of work toward, adhere to, and do it on a consistent basis. And the things that I talked about before, being responsible for your own self-determination, having a positive attitude, having great work ethic, having discipline to be able to execute on a consistent basis, whatever it is you’re trying to do, those are the things that we try to focus on, and we don’t try to focus as much on the outcomes as we do on being all that you can be."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"Eliminate the clutter and all the things that are going on outside and focus on the things that you can control with how you sort of go about and take care of your business. That’s something that’s ongoing, and it can never change."

Nick Saban
American College Football Coach

"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?"

Robert Schuller
American Televangelist, Pastor, and Author

"When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, remember this—you haven’t."

Robert Schuller
American Televangelist, Pastor, and Author

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."

Norman Schwarzkopf
4 Star General in the United States Army

"When in charge, take charge, and do the right thing! "

Norman Schwarzkopf
4 Star General in the United States Army

"Marketing is really theater. It's like staging a performance."

John Sculley
American Businessman
Former CEO of Apple Computer

"...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."

Peter Senge
American Scientist
Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management
Author of the book, "The Fifth Discipline"

"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."

George Bernard Shaw
Irish Playwright and a Co-Founder of the London School of Economics

"When you buy bananas all you want is the fruit not the skin, but you have to pay for the skin also. It is a waste. And you the customer should not have to pay for the waste."

Shigeo Shingo
A Japanese Industrial Engineer

"A relentless barrage of “why’s” is the best way to prepare your mind to pierce the clouded veil of thinking caused by the status quo. Use it often."

Shigeo Shingo
A Japanese Industrial Engineer

"Improvement usually means doing something that we have never done before."

Shigeo Shingo
A Japanese Industrial Engineer

"The best approach is to dig out and eliminate problems where they are assumed not to exist."

Shigeo Shingo
A Japanese Industrial Engineer

"Are you too busy for improvement? Frequently, I am rebuffed by people who say they are too busy and have no time for such activities. I make it a point to respond by telling people, look, you’ll stop being busy either when you die or when the company goes bankrupt."

Shigeo Shingo
A Japanese Industrial Engineer

"The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize."

Shigeo Shingo
A Japanese Industrial Engineer

"90% of resistance is cautionary."

Shigeo Shingo
A Japanese Industrial Engineer

"To my amazement, the program Toyota was going to great expense to transfer to NUMMI was exactly that which the Americans had taught the Japanese decades before."

John Shook
Senior Advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute

"Ethics is the moral courage to do what we know is right, and not to do what we know is wrong."

C.J. Silas
CEO of Phillips Petroleum

"Waste and variation are the two common enemies of the manufacturer."

Robert Skillman
KAVON Trusted Advisor
Certified Master Black Belt
Lean Sensei
Consultant
Trainer

"The ancestor of all actions is the Plan. Visions are only a dream until a plan is developed and actions are taken."

Robert Skillman
KAVON Trusted Advisor
Certified Master Black Belt
Lean Sensei
Consultant
Trainer

"To the optimist, the glass is half-full. To the pessimist, the glass is half-empty. To the Lean Practitioner, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be!"

Robert Skillman
KAVON Trusted Advisor
Certified Master Black Belt
Lean Sensei
Consultant
Trainer

"One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it you have no certainty, until you try."

Sophocles
Ancient Greek Tragedian

"Confidence doesn't come out of nowhere. It's a result of something... hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication."

Roger Staubach
Businessman, Heisman Trophy Winner, and Hall of Fame Quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys

"Nothing good comes in life or athletics unless a lot of hard work has preceded the effort. Only temporary success is achieved by taking short cuts."

Roger Staubach
Businessman, Heisman Trophy Winner, and Hall of Fame Quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys

"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it"

Margaret Thatcher
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"We view errors as opportunities for learning. Rather than blaming individuals, the organization takes corrective actions and distributes knowledge about each experience broadly. Learning is a continuous company-wide process as superiors motivate and train subordinates; as predecessors do the same for successors; and as team members at all levels share knowledge with one another."

Toyota Motor Corporation, The Toyota Way

"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root."

Henry David Thoreau
American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist

"Different isn't always better, but better is always different."

Marshall Thurber
Attorney, Real Estate Developer, Editor, Businessman, Educator, Scholar, Inventor, Negotiator, Author, and Public Speaker

"The key to successful Lean implementation is that leaders have to change. We have to change from the all-knowing, being "in-charge," autocratic "buck stops with me," impatient, blaming person -- who is a control freak -- to the person who is patient, knowledgeable, a good facilitator, willing to teach, actually willing to learn, be a helper, and effective communicator, and be humble."

John Toussaint
CEO, ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value

"We have a wide variation in how we are managing healthcare organizations and that is leading to a lot of [quality] defects."

John Toussaint
CEO, ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value

"Creating work that is meaningful and safe is the mark of profound respect for people."

John Toussaint
CEO, ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value

"How can any of us be 'too busy' to be involved in delivering reliable care to our patients? I think the real reason this attitude exists is that most leaders do not want to change. The truth they do not utter is, 'Change is great as long as I don't have to do it.'"

John Toussaint
CEO, ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value

"I learn each day what I need to know to do tomorrow's work."

Arnold Toynbee
Historian

"I want you to use your own heads. And I want you actively to train your people on how to think for themselves."

Eiji Toyoda
Japanese industrialist

"Everyone should tackle some great project at least once in their life."

Sakichi Toyoda
Japanese Inventor and Industrialist

"Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make."

Donald Trump
Real Estate and Entertainment Mogul

"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results."

Art Turock
Author and Motivational Speaker

"The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."

Mark Twain
American Humorist, Novelist, Writer, and Lecturer.

"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

Mark Twain
American Humorist, Novelist, Writer, and Lecturer.

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

Mark Twain
American Humorist, Novelist, Writer, and Lecturer.

"Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection."

Mark Twain
American Humorist, Novelist, Writer, and Lecturer.

"To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have you emotions moved to tears - could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day ... Cancer can take away all my physical ability. It cannot touch my mind,; it cannot touch my heart; and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless all of you."

Jimmy Valvano
American College Basketball Coach

"If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage and have the ability to turn disadvantage to good effect. They are people who seize opportunity and take risks. Leadership then seems to be a matter of personality and character."

John Viney
Chairman of Heidrick and Struggles

"The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it."

Voltaire
French Enlightenment Writer, Essayist, and Philosopher

"Perfection is attained by slow degrees, it requires the hand of time"

Voltaire
French Enlightenment Writer, Essayist, and Philosopher

"Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer. "

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won't, you most assuredly won't. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Goals provide the energy source that powers our lives. One of the best ways we can get the most from the energy we have is to focus it. That is what goals can do for us; concentrate our energy."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Determination gives you the resolve to keep going in spite of the roadblocks that lay before you."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Courage means to keep working a relationship, to continue seeking solutions to difficult problems, and to stay focused during stressful periods."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Don't be a time manager, be a priority manager. Cut your major goals into bite-sized pieces. Each small priority or requirement on the way to ultimate goal become a mini goal in itself."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience."

Denis Waitley
American Motivational Speaker and Writer, Consultant and Best-Selling Author

"There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Sam Walton
Founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

"High expectations are the key to everything."

Sam Walton
Founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

"You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient."

Sam Walton
Founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

"Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish."

Sam Walton
Founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

"The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts."

Booker T. Washington
American Political Leader, Educator, Orator and Author

"I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition."

Martha Washington
First Lady of the United States

"I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances."

Martha Washington
First Lady of the United States

"There’s no end to the process of learning about the Toyota Way. I don’t think I have a complete understanding even today, and I have worked for the company for 43 years."

Katsuaki Watanabe
President of Toyota Motor Corporation

"Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself."

Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Former CEO of IBM

"The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate."

Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Former CEO of IBM

"If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good."

Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Former CEO of IBM

"Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops."

Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Former CEO of IBM