A Quote by W. Edwards Deming

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

W. Edwards Deming

Quote Topics

Copy Examples Learn Look Nothing People Then Theory Trouble Without Wonder

Quote Author

W. Edwards Deming
American - Scientist
October 14, 1900 - December 20, 1993

Without freedom there will be no firearms among the people; without firearms among the people there will not long be freedom. Certainly there are examples of countries where the people remain relatively free after the people have been disarmed, but there are no examples of a totalitarian state being created or existing where the people have personal arms.

Neal Knox

To many, mathematics is a collection of theorems. For me, mathematics is a collection of examples; a theorem is a statement about a collection of examples and the purpose of proving theorems is to classify and explain the examples.

John B. Conway

My best advice came by examples. A supportive environment at home, school, and grad school. Support at the New York Institute of Technology, then George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and Bob Iger. The examples meant that I should support other people, even when things aren't going well. It will pay off.

Edwin Catmull

What the world wants iz [sic] good examples, not so mutch advice; advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.

Josh Billings

What I love about Stevie Wonder is the way he makes people feel. He's one of the best examples of how music can heal.

India Arie

History is replete with examples of what happens when any group of authorities do not have to answer to empirical evidence but are free to define truth as they see fit. None of the examples has a happy ending. Why should it be otherwise with therapy?

Robert Todd Carroll

Business is about being the best that you can be, and there are always glowing examples of people that we can all learn from.

John Caudwell

Often they [writers on the study of management] have a point of view based upon intuition and experience. They then offer a cadence of two-paragraph examples carefully selected to "prove" their theory, and then they write "one size fits all" books. The message is, "If you'd do what these companies did, you'd be successful too."

Clayton Christensen

The ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work.

Lance Armstrong

When I was in the state legislature, we asked for different examples of voter fraud, and the Republicans could never produce any sort of in-person voter fraud examples.

Marc Veasey

Computers and rocket ships are examples of invention, not of understanding. ... All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It's an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no "why&rdqo"; in those examples. We don't understand why electricity travels. We don't know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.

Scott Adams

Most of all I like "bad" lines, that is those considered bad, in my opinion unjustly, by theory. The reason for the last quotation marks is that most so-called theory is only a collection of examples from master practice.

Bent Larsen

The E-government cabinet, E-health services, online voting, online pre-filled tax returns, e-mobile parking, are all examples of Estonian innovation, but far more importantly, they are examples of the transformative power of intensive and extensive use of Information Technology in the public sector.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Internationally, there are countries going well beyond the course, with airlines, transportation. There are systems around the world that have explored mining, rail transport, television, communication, Internet service - there very common examples around the world that we can draw examples from.

Gar Alperovitz

Some of us can be examples about going ahead and growing, and some of us, unfortunately, don't make it there, and end up being examples because they had to die. I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn't death.