Joe's Garage also starts and ends each chapter with a phrase that captures some of the meaning of the chapter. These phrases are listed below:

• "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
  
• "Leadership does not demand allegiance."
  
• " Progress requires change; if you never change, you will never progress."
  
• "A fool and his inventory are never parted."
  
• "The wise do only what needs to be done."
  
• "Complexity and success go together like oil and water."
  
• "No mistake is fatal unless you make it so."
  
• "Fanatic: A person who redoubles his effort after having lost his direction."
  
• "There's never time to do a job right but there's always time to do it over."
  
• "Quality is not a spectator sport." -- my personal favorite!!
  
• "Moving fast is not the same as going somewhere."
  
• "The finest carver does the least cutting."
  
• "You can fool some of the customers all the time and all of the customers some of the time, but you can't fool all the customers all the time."
  
• "Darkness is merely the period before the dawn of a new day."
  
• "You must give up the present to have the future."
  
• "Life is a story for which you write your own ending."
  
• "A society that venerates shoddy philosophy and scorns good plumbing will have neither philosophies nor pipes that hold water."
  
• "What is well planted cannot be uprooted."
  
• "Success is a matter of luck; just ask any failure."
  
• "Give not to the teacher responsibility for the learning."
  
• "The easiest way at first seems hard."
  
• "Act without agitation; strive without strain."
  
• "The tranquil is master of the turbulent."
  

In addition to the excellent and illustrative story, this book provides three other exceptional items:

"The Ten Commandments of Manufacturing Excellence"

These ten commmandments combine the philosophy and techniques of Lean Thinking, Toyota Production System, TQM and many other "programs" into ten easy to implement and use steps.

A Superlative Glossary

The glossary contains many of the Japanese words and concepts (along with some forward thinking American terms) that make up the Toyota Production System...words such as kanban, kaizen, nagara, poka-yoke, jidoka and andon...then defines and explains them in simple, laymen like terms.

A Laudable Reading List

The reading list is a who's who of Lean Thinking / Toyota Production System's greatest treastises.