"To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart's content."

"Our social mission as a manufacturer is only realized when products reach, are used by, and satisfy the customer... We need to take the customer's skin temperature daily."

"We worked furiously (to realise our goals). Because we didn't have fear, we could do something drastic."

"In order to do a good job a person must like what he or she is doing... If you do things just because you have to, then you will never enjoy work. Nor will you do a good job if you do it simply out of a sense of duty. Stress is often a by-product of such passive or negative attitudes toward work. Paradoxically as it may sound, love of work can be the best medicine for workaholism."

"We will learn that computers, amazing as they are, still cannot come close to being as effective as human beings. A computer isn't creative on its own because it is programmed to behave in a predictable way. Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience. Computers simply cannot do that."

"The key to success for Sony, and to everything in Business, Science, and Technology for that matter, is never to follow the others. We bet the company on that basic technology (the Trinitron TV), and in 23 years nobody has been able to match it."

"Research bear a true fruit, the research must start from needs."

"The untrapped mind is open enough to see many possibilities, humble enough to learn from anyone and anything, forbearing enough to forgive all, perceptive enough to see things as they really are, and reasonable enough to judge their true value."

"The lesson of Apollo demonstrates that no matter how big the goal, if you apply yourself diligently to the work, even the most difficult job can be be accomplished flawlessly."

"Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience. Computers simply cannot do that."

"My father served the State by investing a weaving machine. He told me to make automobiles. It is difficult to create an automobile industry."

"In business as well, if you are to be successful you must always win. An enterprise will grow in accordance with the amount of effort you plow into it."

"Matsushita Konosuke is known in Japan as the ‘god of management’. From an impoverished background, he founded a small electronics business and built this into a global corporation, becoming Japan’s richest man. His philosophy of management, based around the concept of ‘peace through prosperity’ included such concepts as low-priced, mass-produced consumer goods to enhance the quality of everyday living, mutual support and respect between the corporation and its employees, and close relations with distributors and customers. His ideas were widely admired and imitated in Japan, and in the 1980s became popular in the USA and Europe as well."

"Recognizing our responsibilities as industrialists, we will devote ourselves to the progress and development of society and the well-being of people through our business activities, thereby enhancing the quality of life throughout the world."

"Everyone of plebeian."

"One culture, one civilization, one language, and one ethnic group."

"A neighbor with one billion people equipped with nuclear bombs and has expanded its military outlays by double digits for 17 years in a row, and it is unclear as to what this is being used for. It is beginning to be a considerable threat."

"Luckily, we Japanese have yellow faces."

"Everyone of commoner."

"Do I have to say something?"

"A couple of weeks after that I met Sergei Lavrov at the G8 ministerial in Potsdam, Germany. Frank-Walter Steinmeier was so proud of the beautiful restoration of Cecilienhof Palace, where the Potsdam Conference had been held in 1945 as World War II was drawing to a close. The flags of the victors were displayed in the corners of the conference room—the Stars and Stripes of the United States; the Union Jack of Great Britain; and the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union—here in the unified Germany. Amazing, I thought. What would Truman think? What would Stalin think? The sentiment of the moment was suddenly disrupted by the comment of my unpredictable friend, the Japanese foreign minister, Taro Aso. “But for a few turns in the war, it could have been the flags of Germany, Italy, and Japan,” he blurted out. Okay, I thought. Time to move on."

"...the key factor in industry is creativity. I said there are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business."

"From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it."

"...if you are nothing but profit-conscious, you cannot see the opportunities ahead."

"Advertising and promotion alone will not sustain a bad product or a product that is not right for the times."

"...I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion."

"We made a completely new kind of transistor (the NPN BJT, and in our development work, our researcher, Leo Esaki, demonstrated the electron tunneling effect, which led to the development of the tunnel diode for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize seventeen years later, after he had joined IBM."

"What we in industry learned in dealing with people is that people do not work just for money and that if you are trying to motivate, money is not the most effective tool."

"The concept of lifetime employment arose when Japanese managers and employees both realized that they had much in common and that they had to make some long-range plans."

"In all my years in business I can recall very few people I have wanted to fire for making mistakes."

"My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States."

"The effect of three things - the new laws, the revision of the tax system, and the elimination of the zaibatsu conglomerates - was to make Japan an egalitarian society for the first time."

"The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a familylike feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate."

"There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies."

"Of course we have to make a profit, but we have to make a profit over the long haul, not just the short term, and that means we must keep investing in research and development - it has run consistently about 6 percent of sales at Sony - and in service."

"Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative."

"I have always made it a point to know our employees, to visit every facility of our company, and to try to meet and know every single employee."

"You can be totally rational with a machine. But if you work with people, sometimes logic often has to take a backseat to understanding."

"...the company must not throw money away on huge bonuses for executives or other frivolities but must share its fate with the workers."

"Japanese attitudes toward work seem to be critically different from American attitudes."

"We want everybody to have the best facilities in which to work, but we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices."

"..I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work. People need money, but they also want to be happy in their work and proud of it."

"...the differences between U.S. and Japanese companies go beyond the cultural."

"'There is a major difference between you and me,' I told him. 'Yes, I am rich. But you are wealthy. And that is why you can buy such (expensive jewelry (for your wife and why I cannot.'"

"The important thing in my view is not to pin the blame for a mistake on somebody, but rather to find out what caused the mistake."

"Amenities are not of great concern to management in Japan."

"The investor and the employee are in the same position, but sometimes the employee is more important, because he will be there a long time whereas an investor will often get in and out on a whim in order to make a profit."

"We want to keep the company healthy and its employees happy, and we want to keep them on the job and productive."

"I believe people work for satisfaction."

"I often say to my assistants, "Never trust anybody," but what I mean is that you should never trust someone else to do a job exactly the way you would want it done."