I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give.

If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth.

Fortune lies in heaven. Armor lies in the heart. Achievement lies in the legs.

-- The 'Dragon of Echigo' — a Sengoku-era warlord whose devotion to righteous warfare and Buddhist faith made him Japan's most paradoxical military figure

In war, a victory of sixty percent is the best. Total victory breeds complacency.

-- The 'Tiger of Kai' who transformed his landlocked mountain domain into one of Sengoku Japan's most formidable military powers

If the cuckoo will not sing, kill it.

-- The revolutionary warlord who dismantled feudal Japan's medieval order and launched the country toward unification

This man might be the one to seize the realm.

-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi's chief strategist and the architect of his greatest victories

If you do not know you may fall halfway through your work, you will not fall halfway through.

-- The visionary who brokered the alliance that overthrew Japan's feudal government and launched the country into modernity

I do not mind hardship — only let it be hardship that matters.

-- The radical samurai who created Japan's first modern militia and ignited the revolution that ended feudal rule