When making choices, or setting policies about the economy, education or medicine, society is best served by electing people who are particularly hardworking, intelligent and interested in long-term thinking.

I know that historically our foundation has had great relations with all the administrations.[Bill] Clinton administration did a lot of outreach. The greatest rise in U.S. foreign aid was under the [George] Bush administration, that's where we got the AIDS initiative, which is called PEPFAR.

From the day Microsoft was started, the only constraint to our growth has been attracting ah, more great programmers, very smart, committed, ah, people. And so we're always on... on the look for ah, that kind of person.

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

I hope someday what people can do with their lives depends on their talents and how hard they are willing to work, rather than on where they happen to be born.

I'm not a macroeconomics person.

The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.