640K ought to be enough for anybody.
AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about. The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine.
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
As you improve health in a society, population growth goes down. You know, I thought it was... before I learned about it, I thought it was paradoxical.
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.
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it's really let us down.
DOS is ugly and interferes with users' experience.
I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away.
I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.
I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don't just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.
I have 100 billion dollars... You realize I could spend 3 million dollars a day, every day, for the next 100 years? And that's if I don't make another dime. Tell you what-I'll buy your right arm for a million dollars. I give you a million bucks, and I get to sever your arm right here.
I have drifted away from thinking about these philanthropic things. And it was only as the wealth got large enough and Melinda and I had talked about the view that that wealth wasn't something that would be good to just pass to the children.
I mean, if we said right now, there's somebody in the next room who's dying, let's all go save their life, you know, everybody would just get up immediately and go get involved in that.
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.
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.
I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.
I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software.
If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG.
If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?
If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.
If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
In the decade ahead I can predict that we will provide over twice the productivity improvement that we provided in the '90s.
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.
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.
Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we'd want to get involved.
It's been shown that most people download viruses unwittingly - they don't know they're doing it until it's too late. That's what I mean here. We're talking about protecting the consumer.
It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.
Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself.
Life is not fair; get used to it.
Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting.
Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they're not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines... There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.
People everywhere love Windows.
Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers - organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative - if we don't solve these security problems, then people will hold back.
Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.
So we do software for watches, for phones, for TV sets, for cars. And some of these take a long time to catch on.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
The browser space that we are in we have about 90 percent. Sure, Firefox has come along, and the press love the idea of that. Our commitment is to keep our browser that competes with Firefox to be the best browser - best in security, best in features.
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.
The huge turnout for Live 8 here and around the world proves that thanks to the leadership from people like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the world is beginning to demand more action on global health and poverty.
The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
The reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines.
The two areas that are changing... are information technology and medical technology. Those are the things that the world will be very different 20 years from now than it is today.
The U.S. couldn't even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They'll be killing each other again in less than a year. I'm sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.
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.
There are some things that we are always thinking about. For example, when will speech recognition be good enough for everybody to use that? And we have made a lot more progress this year on that. I think we will surprise people a bit on how well we will do on our speech recognition.
There is a certain responsibility that accrued to me when I got to this unexpected position.
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.
Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.
We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.
We've got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.
What we're really after is simply that people acquire a legal license for Windows for each computer they own before they move on to Linux or Sun Solaris or BSD or OS/2 or whatever.
When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.
When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen.
Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.
Windows 2000 already contains features such as the human discipline component, where the PC can send an electric shock through the keyboard if the human does something that does not please Windows.
You see, antiquated ideas of kindness and generosity are simply bugs that must be programmed out of our world. And these cold, unfeeling machines will show us the way.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
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