Science Quote by W. Edwards Deming

A management guru could have written this as a bland morale poster. Deming, a scientist with a statistician’s suspicion of comforting stories, meant it as an indictment. "All anyone asks" sounds generous, even sentimental, but the twist is how small the request actually is: not higher wages, not grand perks, just the basic conditions to do good work without being sabotaged by the system.

Deming’s intent is pointedly anti-heroic. Pride isn’t an inner attitude employees should be coached into; it’s an outcome management either enables or blocks. The subtext is that most workplaces quietly steal pride through arbitrary targets, contradictory directives, and punishment disguised as performance evaluation. Deming spent his career arguing that quality problems aren’t primarily worker problems. They’re process problems. So the line doubles as a rebuke to bosses who treat motivation as an individual failing while keeping the machinery dysfunctional.

Context matters: Deming’s postwar influence in Japan and his later critique of American corporate practice came from seeing how measurement, variation, and incentives interact. He watched organizations chase short-term numbers and then act surprised when people cut corners, hide mistakes, and stop caring. "A chance to work with pride" is really a demand for stable processes, training, clear aims, and the elimination of fear - the unglamorous infrastructure of dignity.

The sentence works because it flips the usual power dynamic. It frames pride as a minimal human baseline, not a reward. If your organization can’t offer even that "chance", Deming implies, the problem isn’t your people. It’s you.