Quotes

For me, quotes are quite inspirational. They often captures the essence of something very complex in a very simple way, digestible for all. These are some of the inspirational quotes I have come across on my journey. The quotes listed are primarily Lean and leadership oriented but there will also be some of general inspiration.

I have tried my best to find the origins, please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.

OriginatorQuote
Abraham H. Maslow"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." (1966)
Abraham Lincoln"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
Albert Einstein“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
Albert Einstein“We can’t solve the problem by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Aristotele"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Aristotele"The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching."
Aristotele"Those that know do, Those that understand, teach."
Aristotele"Well begun is half done."
Aristotele“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.”
Charles Darwin"It is not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Frank Tyger
“Experience is not what you’ve been through, it’s what you take from it.”
Henry Ford“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
James P. Womack"If this Lean stuff seems easy you're probably not doing it."
Jeff Bezos"Determine what your customers need, and then work backwards."
Joel Barker"A leader is someone you'd follow to go somewhere that you wouldn't go by yourself."
John Quincy Adams"It is of no use to discover out own faults and infirmities unless the discovery prompts up to amendment."
John Quincy Adams“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then you are a leader.”
John Quincy Adams“Try and fail, but don't fail to try.”
John Wooden"If you don't have time to do it right in the first place, when will you have time to do it over?"
Lao Tzu"To acquire knowledge, add things everyday. To acquire wisdom, subtract things everyday."
Mark Twain"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
Masaaki Imai“Where there is no standard, there can be no improvement. For these reasons, standards are the basis for both maintenance and improvement.”
Maya Angelou"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
Miyamoto Musashi"Do nothing that is of no use." (1645)
Miyamoto Musashi"You can only fight the way you practice." (1645)
Paul Akers"Lean is learning to see waste. The moment you begin to see waste, everything else will take care of itself. Until you don't see waste in everything. You don't understand lean."
Peter Drucker"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all"
Peter Drucker“Follow effective action with quiet reflection, and then from the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
Peter Drucker“People don’t resist change, they resist being changed.”
Peter Drucker"No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings."
Rudyard Kipling"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."
Shigeo Shingo"Improvement usually means doing something that we have never done before."
Shigeo Shingo“The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.”
Sir Winston Churchill“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Steve Jobs“If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.”
Taiichi Ohno"No problem is a problem."
Taiichi Ohno"We are all human and we are wrong half the time."
Taiichi Ohno“Understanding is my favourite word. I believe it has a specific meaning – to approach an object positively and comprehend its nature.”
Theodore Roosevelt“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, who 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 great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
W. Edwards Deming"94% of problems in business are systems driven and only 6% are people driven."
W. Edwards Deming"If you do not know how to ask the right questions, you discover nothing."
W. Edwards Deming"No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer."
W. Edwards Deming"Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures."
W. Edwards Deming"Quality is everyone's responsibility."
W. Edwards Deming"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion."
W. Edwards Deming“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
W. Edwards Deming"You can't manage what you can't measure."
Zig Ziglar"The only thing worse than training people and loosing them is not training them and keeping them."
Zig Ziglar"If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you."