“Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.”
But to Survive, We Must Learn
From a personal recording of W. Edwards Deming’s 4-day seminar “Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position,” held in Newport Beach, California, February 24-28, 1986, quoted by Frank Voehl in Deming: The Way We Knew Him (St. Lucie Press, 1995). The Deming Institute’s quote archive catalogs the passage under Improvement and Learning. A nearby variant circulates widely under his name: “Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival”.