Computer science … jobs should be way more interesting than even going to Wall Street or being a lawyer--or, I can argue, than anything but perhaps biology, and there it's just a tie.

I know there's a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that's fine with me.

If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that's a good discussion. Maybe that's the way to help close the deficit.

People can criticize Microsoft for supporting this TV thing for the past eight years, but it is a long-term bet, There is not any other software business that is as dedicated to the vision of the TV and the PDA [personal digital assistant] as we are.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

The quality of research in the U.S. is absolutely the best.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important. That your sense of justice says, why should rich kids - who barely get these diseases and almost never die of them - why should they get the vaccines, when poor kids, who actually do die from these diseases, don't get those things? It's an unbelievable inequity that there isn't that access.