“The public does not know what is possible. We do.”

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.

No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.

You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

That’s what we’re all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand.

It’s a great feeling to know that 100 cops want to stop you doing something and they can’t.

Everybody’s on their toes and focused on what we’re about to do, and then there’s this moment where you relax because you see that everybody is there to do the best that they can.

One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

I’m always a little leery about doing shows where I’m not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes.