Bill Gates Quotes

1003 Bill Gates Quotes

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If you ever talk to a great programmer, you’ll find he knows his tools like an artist knows his paintbrushes.
Bill Gates

As the company has grown, we have continually worked to have an organization within an organization. Small teams can communicate efficiently and aren’t encumbered by a big structure slowing them down.
Bill Gates

You need a strong team, because a mediocre team gives mediocre results, no matter how well managed it is.
Bill Gates

Microsoft is a company that moves very rapidly, and we set priorities based on what our customers are asking for.
Bill Gates

I like question and answer periods because they allow me to get a sense of what people are excited about and what they are upset about.
Bill Gates

The early version of Mail Merge was so complicated that whenever a customer called for help, our representative would lie down on the couch to take the call, knowing the conversation was likely to last a long time. Clearly something was wrong.
Bill Gates

[In 1997] Our great successes come with an approach of embracing anything that’s popular and then coming along with extensions. That’s the approach that worked for us with NetWare, the approach that worked in spreadsheets and word processing, with the Internet – to embrace everything that’s out there and make it easy for systems to co-exist.
Bill Gates

In a fast-moving industry, the companies that are successful are those that are able to get out in the front of the key trends and really add value in the new applications.
Bill Gates

[On being both technician and a businessman] I think the success of Microsoft has come from knowing these things have a relationship with each other. The two sides drive each other.
Bill Gates

It sends a wrong message to have a foreigner come in to run things.
Bill Gates



Our competitors are relatively less competent at doing business outside the United States than inside the United States, so we always manage to do very well.
Bill Gates

I never realized that there are 14 distinct written and spoken languages in India.
Bill Gates

[In 1997 on India] A billion people is a lot of people, and even though the country is really poor, there are a lot of talented people with world-class educations, and companies that are as forward-looking and capable as anywhere.
Bill Gates

[In 1997] India holds tremendous potential of becoming a software superpower, provided the government matches the human skills with the required infrastructure.
Bill Gates

In early human history, technological advantages were built on the availability of certain plants, animals, and geographies… In today’s… information society, the critical natural resources are human intelligence, skill, and leadership.
Bill Gates

I do worry about getting the bandwidth, not only to businesses, but into the home.
Bill Gates

The notion that Microsoft is a media company is a strange thing to say.
Bill Gates

At Microsoft we take the long-term view. That means we invest a lot in research and development to help us understand future directions, while staying competitive in terms of product development today. It’s obviously a big challenge for any company to remain vital and to successfully transition to new business models as needed.
Bill Gates

We come into work every day knowing that we can destroy the company… and that we better keep our wits about us, make the long-term investments in research that are going to make a big difference and really drive things forward.
Bill Gates

This is a scale-of-economics business where the marginal costs of selling an extra copy of software is very small, so we can afford to put billions into the R&D of these products that go out to the large mass market.
Bill Gates



With a research lab you don’t want to sit at a press conference and say, ‘In three years they will invent the following then things.’ Part of the beauty of research is getting the greatest minds together without any deadline.
Bill Gates

The work done at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center [PARC] is the source of the basic approach to personal computing that’s popular today. But it’s certainly a cautionary tale from a business point of view that all investment and all that work was done, and Xerox was never able to take advantage of that. I don’t think it’s something that’s necessary. If you do the right things, you get the people working together the right way, there’s no better investment than great research work.
Bill Gates

It’s absolutely critical that we have an environment in which great minds from many countries can work together.
Bill Gates

[In 1975] As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Bill Gates

Countries, as they get more developed, want to foster a local software industry, so they pass laws and do better and better.
Bill Gates

This is not a country where success and great products should be punished.
Bill Gates

I am the opposite of defiant. I am disappointed. I am humble. I am respectful.
Bill Gates

What you have is, basically, the US government saying our products are too capable…
Bill Gates

You have the Department of Justice asking in one of their filings to have a review process that they have to look over any new product that we do… That really sounds a lot like product regulation.
Bill Gates

A monopolist by definition, is a company that has the ability to restrict entry by new firms and unilaterally control price. Microsoft can do neither.
Bill Gates



[In 1996] Here we have more money going into software startups than ever before. You go down to California and everybody’s driving Ferraris – not everybody, but you know, it’s like on trees down there.
Bill Gates

[On fighting IBM] We had to compete against he largest company in the computer industry, which was fighting us with operating system software we had helped develop.
Bill Gates

How should we prepare ourselves in case our most important partner decides not to work with us anymore?
Bill Gates

I don’t think any company will ever again have the position that IBM had.
Bill Gates

The most important thing we have done at Microsoft is to create an ‘open’ operating system platform – first MS-DOS and now Windows – for personal computers.
Bill Gates

Name an industry that’s going to grow faster than the PC industry… We might only grow at 18 percent.
Bill Gates

[In 1998 at the Consumer Electronics Show] I think it’s valuable to remember that not all the great new products here go on to be a success.
Bill Gates

[In 1995 on a new product that failed] We can afford to make a few mistakes now, and we can’t afford not to try.
Bill Gates

[On making a product] If you take quality as a given, you are always going to have some uncertainty in the date. Every product is like that.
Bill Gates

Of all the big initiatives at Microsoft, simplicity is No. 1.
Bill Gates



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