Top 35 Hideo Kojima Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Find something to believe in, and find it for yourself. And when you do – pass it on to the future.”

— Hideo Kojima

2. “Games are a way of escaping reality – that’s why you need heroic factor.”

— Hideo Kojima

3. “Building the future, and keeping the past alive – are one and the same thing.”

— Hideo Kojima

4. “The human body is supposed to be 70 percent water. I consider myself 70 percent film.”

— Hideo Kojima

5. “I want my games to teach a message about life, by presenting situations where the answer isn’t a clear yes or no.”

— Hideo Kojima

6. “War buddies don’t exist in the meeting room. It’s a battle between a lot of different officers. Some continue fighting when they don’t realize that they have been shot.”

— Hideo Kojima

7. “What I’m doing is creating a game. I’m not making a movie. To make the game more enjoyable and captivating, and to make the player feel like he’s present in that setting, we need the cinematic element.”

— Hideo Kojima

8. “I was born in Japan and raised in Japan, but those are the only things that make me Japanese, I’ve grown up reading books from all over.”

— Hideo Kojima

9. “We really feel the fact of our mortality after we turn forty years old.”

— Hideo Kojima

10. “Game creation keeps on expanding, just like the Universe. That is why I keep making games.”

— Hideo Kojima

11. “As a creator, I always want to betray fans expectations.”

— Hideo Kojima

12. “It’s not wether you were right or wrong, but how much faith you were willing to have – that decides the future.”

— Hideo Kojima

13. “Another world exists that I must experience. A genus of people exists who I must meet. I must inhale the air they breathe – share their world at all costs.”

— Hideo Kojima

14. “I can see how everything relates to everything else when I think that nothing is merely coincidental. If everything that happens is inevitable, then the world is connected and whole.”

— Hideo Kojima

15. “Super Mario Bros. is equivalent to the Big Bang of our gaming universe. If it were not for this blindingly spectacular creation, digital entertainment as we know it today would not exist.”

— Hideo Kojima

16. “I respect Shigeru Miyamoto, so there will be a lot of mushrooms in Metal Gear Solid 3. But you cannot eat turtles.”

— Hideo Kojima

17. “When a man is hit by Friendly Fire, his blood pressure lowers and his morale sinks. I have been hit by Friendly Fire in my heart. Sighs spill from my body instead of blood.”

— Hideo Kojima

18. “My unlimited desire to create stuff surpasses the advancement in hardware power.”

— Hideo Kojima

19. “I want to show people how there are variations and different interpretations of good and evil.”

— Hideo Kojima

20. “My past identity separates from me and remains in the past; he becomes someone else. Is memory really as insubstantial as the fragments of information that we store in our heads?”

— Hideo Kojima

21. “Humanity needs more than merely information. We express original ideas, humor, and our personal wills. We express passions and emotions. A person’s point of view conveys all of these aspects of identity.”

— Hideo Kojima

22. “At Disneyland, you never go backstage – even when youre in the bathroom.”

— Hideo Kojima

23. “People are satisfied with making minor upgrades and tweaking things here and there – as long as that’s the landscape, it will keep on happening. I don’t see a problem necessarily, but at the same time it is nice to see new things come.”

— Hideo Kojima

24. “This may sound pretentious, but I don’t like being thought of as ‘the Metal Gear guy.’ There’s a lot more I can do.”

— Hideo Kojima

25. “My problem is that whenever I shoot, I do it Bruce Willis “Die Hard” style – in a very cinematic fashion.”

— Hideo Kojima

26. “You have to be very careful when you’re working on a sequel, because it has to be a continuation of what you did before.”

— Hideo Kojima

27. “Genetic engineering is a result of science advancement, so I don’t think that in itself is bad.”

— Hideo Kojima

28. “I usually wear casual clothes to the office. I wear a suit maybe two or three times a month, and usually only when I need to meet with the head office.”

— Hideo Kojima

29. “It’s nice to wear a suit once in a while. It can restrict some body movement, but it makes me feel as though I’m part of society. I feel a sense of security because I’ve conformed to the standards of the rest of the world.”

— Hideo Kojima

30. “What’s troubling is that because the camera is 3D, the northern part of the screen isn’t necessarily north anymore. So the jungle transforms into the true meaning of a jungle. For someone with no sense of direction like myself, I get lost in the caves every time.”

— Hideo Kojima

31. “There are so many books and movies I like I never mention specific ones.”

— Hideo Kojima

32. “I want to reassure fans that I am 100% involved and will continue working on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain; I’m determined to make it the greatest game I’ve directed to date. Don’t miss it!”

— Hideo Kojima

33. “We might compare each day’s decisions with the work of steering a boat. Our efforts will result in nebulous confusion if we make a wrong move at any point, even if it’s only a small tack to the side. We absolutely cannot afford carelessness, lest we risk becoming lost ourselves.”

— Hideo Kojima

34. “Japanese gamers aren’t really into action games right now. They’re into role-playing or strategy games with a lot of stats, but action titles are still really popular across the US and Europe.”

— Hideo Kojima

35. “We live in the era of the search engine. Gone is the era of finding things on your own. If you want to find something, you can use your computer or phone to easily google it. You can find popular restaurants, movies, novels, and fashion anywhere in the world with no challenge. Ours is now a life of passive acquisition. But the joy of finding is gone, as is the catharsis of going to great trouble in searching for something and finding it.”

— Hideo Kojima

36. “This safety from harm might cause the imaginative experience of reading a book to be judged inferior to real experience. But that is not the case. Making contact with memes, in the forms of books or movies or other media, provides knowledge and wisdom necessary for going out into the real world; they are legitimate experiences all the same.”

— Hideo Kojima