Bill Gates

The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.

Embrace bad news to learn where you need the most improvement.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve.

If geek means you're willing to study things, and if you think science and engineering matter, I plead guilty. If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

'I don't know' has become 'I don't know yet'.

To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.

The returns from investing in poor people are just as great as the returns from investing in the business world... and have even more meaning

Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software.

Bill Gates' Success Factors for Microsoft 1. Long-term Approach 2. Passion for Products and Technology 3. Teamwork 4. Results 5. Customer Feedback 6. Individual Excellence

(In response to Java) Anybody who thinks a little 9,000-line program that's distributed free and can be cloned by anyone is going to affect anything we do at Microsoft has his head screwed on wrong.

The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the

It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism-if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. ... You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Reward worthy failure - Experimentation.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.

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.

We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicate effectively with e-mail; it's ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most.

I'm quite worried about the fiscal imbalances that we've got and what that might mean in terms of financial crisis ahead.