Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that.

About three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're 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.

It’s useful to compare our preparations for epidemics with our preparations for war.

Make sure people get educated, help out with health emergencies. Those things, the government should do. That's 96 per cent of the economy, those two sectors.

You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that.

I don't think you're as capable of handling lack of sleep or whatever challenges you throw at your body as you get older. However, I never missed a day of work.

The information highway will transform our culture as dramatically as Gutenberg's press did the Middle Ages.