There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

Success is a lousy teacher. It makes you think you know what you're doing.

Philanthropy should be voluntary.

As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

Thinking about impact on children meant adding to the agenda, both the R&D agenda and the delivery agenda, but it's amazing news, even in the scale of other tragedies.

Microsoft does not dominate the software industry by any stretch of the imagination. We have lots of very able competitors who keep us constantly vigilant, and sometimes they beat us to the punch. Microsoft's success to date is based solely on the fact that people like Microsoft software.

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.