“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.”

Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want.

Executives of the company must have the necessary qualities to direct the personnel by showing them the way to do things.

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.

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.

Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.

This is the only country in the world where today’s employee, is tomorrow’s employer.

The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees.

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

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.

To create a familylike feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate.

Employees are not guilty; why should they suffer?

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