“If you don’t want Japan to buy it, don’t sell it.”

Curiosity is the key to creativity.

You can be totally rational with a machine.

Employees are not guilty; why should they suffer?

I feel it is my fault because I made the decision to hire him.

If we face recession, we should not lay off employees; the company should sacrifice a profit. It’s management’s risk and management’s responsibility.

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.

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

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

If management take the risk of hiring them, we have to take the responsibility for them.

The “patron saint” of Japanese quality control, ironically, is an American named W. Edwards Deming, who was virtually unknown in his own country until his ideas of quality control began to make such a big impact on Japanese companies.

We don’t believe in market research for a new product unknown to the public. So we never do any.

My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target.

If we do our best and make efforts, a peaceful and great future will become ours without fail.

I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work.

A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.

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

Buy cheap and sell high is a rule of business, and when you control enough money and enough banks you can always manage that a stock you want shall be temporarily cheap.

I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.

Hmm, should I stay on the underground when everybody else is selling out?’ Nowadays, you can just do it – have your name-brand clothes, do songs with rock n’ rollers – and it’s not considered selling out.

We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we’re doing, if we’re selling it, if the listener likes us.

The British brand is so popular particularly in the US that they put the union jack flag on top of beer bottles because it sells.

People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering.

Rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value. Poor people think negatively about selling and promotion.

MTV made a huge impact. Heavy rotation took you from selling 1m albums to 20m albums, and that meant a lot of dough.