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

In the United States businessmen often do not trust their colleagues.

I consider it my job to nurture the creativity of the people I work with because at Sony we know that a terrific idea is more likely to happen in an open, free and trusting atmosphere than when everything is calculated.

My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.

Management of an industrial company must be giving targets to the engineers constantly; that may be the most important job management has in dealing with its engineers.

But if you work with people, sometimes logic often has to take a backseat to understanding.

And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned.

Don’t do market research.

I believe people work for satisfaction.

Japanese people tend to be much better adjusted to the notion of work, any kind of work, as honorable.

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.

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

When I find an employee who turns out to be wrong for the job,

In the long run, no matter how good or successful you are or how clever or crafty.

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.

We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business.

The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.

Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

Companies that pretend to care about music and really care about other things – whether it be hardware, whether it be advertising – and now they look at music as a loss leader. And we know music isn’t a loss leader; music is an important part of our lives.

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

I will commend the Democrats for one thing. If they name Keith Ellison as the head of the DNC, then I’ll commend them for truth in advertising.

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men – the man he is and the man he wants to be.

Advertising is legalized lying.