I say an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour out of the entire system. I say an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is worthless. Bottlenecks govern both throughput and inventory.

So this is the goal: To make money by increasing net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow.

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

The goal is not to improve one measurement in isolation. The goal is to reduce operational expenses AND reduce inventories and increase throughput simultaneously.

Tell me how you measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave

If you don't manufacture a quality product all you've got at the end is a bunch of expensive mistakes.

Never let something important become urgent

Cost Accounting is enemy number one of productivity.

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

I write down the three measurements which Lou and I agreed are central to knowing if the company is making money: net profit, ROI and cash flow.

Tell me what we had was real, I whisper.

What I find sad is that the New Age movement is primarily a commercial undertaking. But it is answering to a human need.

Politics [is] the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.

It's hard for me to imagine that some people in the CIA who had firsthand knowledge would be unable to recognize that this would be helpful information for a soldier's death.

... learning to love any one is like an increase of property, -- it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.

The Daytona 500 is a career-winning race. It defines careers for drivers, crew members, crew chiefs and race teams. It has that power.

At my funeral, I want Meryl Streep crying in five different accents.

I like to fish when it's not too hot.

We change who we are to fit the exogenous of our time, and not just strategically or to our own advantage, sometimes sympathetically without our even knowing it for the betterment of the whole group.

I'm the last survivor of a dead culture. And I don't really belong in the world anymore. And in some ways I feel I ought to be dead.