Quote 1: Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.
Quote 2: There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.
Quote 3: Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Quote 4: Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
Quote 5: Life is not fair; get used to it.
Quote 6: It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
Quote 7: If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?
Quote 8: If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.
Quote 9: If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG.
Quote 10: As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
Quote 11: 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Quote 12: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
Quote 13: Television is not real life. In real life peoplef actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Quote 14: We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.
Quote 15: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you. Find yourself.
Quote 16: Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated
Quote 17: I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.
Quote 18: Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
Quote 19: We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.
Quote 20: I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.
Quote 21: Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
Quote 22: I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
Quote 23: The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.
Quote 24: This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.
Quote 25: Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.
Quote 26: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.
Quote 27: We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.
Quote 28: The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.
Quote 29: I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.
Quote 30: I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!
Quote 31: Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.
Quote 32: Who decides what’s in Windows? The customers who buy it.
Quote 33: The best teacher is very interactive.
Quote 34: Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.
Quote 35: We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
Quote 36: To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.
Quote 37: Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.
Quote 38: The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written.
Quote 39: If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
Quote 40: Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.
Quote 41: There’s only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that’s already been written.
Quote 42: Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.
Quote 43: About three million computers get sold every year in China, but people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
Quote 44: Make it just like a Mac.
Quote 45: At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas, but the image is that they all come from the top — I’m afraid that’s not quite right.
Quote 46: The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Quote 47: I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
Quote 48: In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.
Quote 49: We’re responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software.. that’s something we brought to computing. And so it’s a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don’t get in the way of that dream.
Quote 50: People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they?
Quote 51: Every day we’re saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy?’ How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.
Quote 52: It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.
Quote 53: Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It’s a good thing we have museums to document that.
Quote 54: If something is expensive to develop, and somebody’s not going to get paid, it won’t get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?
Quote 55: In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.
Quote 56: Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.
Quote 57: Patience is a key element of success.
Quote 58: Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Quote 59: ‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.
Quote 60: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Quote 61: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Quote 62: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Quote 63: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT.
Quote 64: I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one’s children. It’s not constructive for them.
Quote 65: I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.
Quote 66: The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
Quote 67: We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.
Quote 68: The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn’t get bigger or heavier.
Quote 69: To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination — and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.
Quote 70: The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.
Quote 71: The Internet will help achieve “friction free capitalism by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.
Quote 72: If you are born poor its not your mistake, but if you die poor its your mistake.
