Bill Gates Quotes

1003 Bill Gates Quotes

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If I am trying to get a point across efficiently and I am with people I worked with for a long time or we are talking about something we’re really excited about, then if an outsider listened in it would sound awfully hardcore. To characterize it as just aggressive is inaccurate.
Bill Gates

[After a reorganization of Microsoft’s structure] It was a strange structure. We could never focus enough on the different parts of the business.
Bill Gates

[In October 1984] Windows is the most strategic product that Microsoft is working on. We want it to be the environment of choice for the next generation of graphical applications. To achieve this goal, it must have the functionality and performance required by this new generation of graphical applications. This will not be easy; it will be a significant advancement of the state of the art.
Bill Gates

[On being told just to get ‘Windows’ out into the market and then you can always make it better later] No, we’ve got to go out there with something that’s just head and shoulders above everybody else. It’s gotta be the right product.
Bill Gates

[On Goldman Sachs talking about a Microsoft IPO in 1986 and choosing who to go with] Well, they didn’t spill their food and they seemed like nice guys. I guess we should go with them.
Bill Gates

[On Allen resigning from the Microsoft board to setup his own software company Asymetrix] I pushed him pretty hard. He wanted to go out and prove he could do his own thing. I tried to convince him to do that within the context of Microsoft, but he decided to do it himself.
Bill Gates

[On the Microsoft listing and being besieged with requests to buy stock] I won’t grant any of these goofy requests. I hate the whole thing. All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock.
Bill Gates

[On an investment banker criticised his flat monotone delivery of his company’s vital statistics at a rehearsal] You mean I’m supposed to say boring things in an exciting way?
Bill Gates

[On the day Microsoft went public on him being off the coast of Australia on a 56 foot chartered sailing vessel reading books and getting a closeup look at the Great Barrier Reef reading as many books as possible.] I was sort of pampering myself.
Bill Gates

If microcomputer software based on a standard is not a good thing, then hey, we’re not going to do much business. If that’s wrong, then God bless Kay Nishi and I hope he finds a raft that floats, because I’m on this ship tied to the wheel.
Bill Gates



[On resolving the differences between Bill Gates and Kay Nishi for three days in Tokyo] We’d talk about our vision, and then we’d get mad at each other and then we’d apologize.
Bill Gates

[On Kay Nishi spending $1 million dollars on a lifesize replica of a Brontoasaurus dinosaur to sell a Microsoft software program] Kay’s more like me than probably anybody I’ve ever met. But he just went overboard.
Bill Gates

[To one programmer who had posted a Microsoft stock chart showing it’s price on his office door] Is this a distraction?
Bill Gates

[On employees obsessing about their paper wealth looking at the Microsoft stock price] It’s stupid. The company is a high-tech stock, and high-tech stocks are volatile.
Bill Gates

Gosh, I should get a boat. [But not really wanting to spend the money]
Bill Gates

[On being approached by a writer from the New Yorker for an interview.] What’s the New Yorker?
Bill Gates

Screw the people with the ATs. Lets just make it [the new operating system] for the 386, so they can upgrade.
Bill Gates

[On not being told about a law suit by Apple about infringing visual display features in Windows when he had met with then Apple chairman John Sculley the day before] He never mentioned it to me… not one word. So I told people at first, when the rumors started, that it wasn’t true. Then we found out they’d called all these reporters and sent them all a copy of the lawsuit. This was a massive [public relations] attack… We’re confused. I’m not kidding. I’ve been involved in a lot of lawsuits and every lawsuit I’ve been in, I’ve thought, ‘I hope we’re OK.’ But not this one. You have to wonder – if they’re rational people – what are they thinking… Apple is using the press to send a message. The suit is supposed to strike fear into people’s hearts and make them think that Apple invented this stuff and not Xerox.
Bill Gates

I informed Sculley about the agreements. We said, ‘Come on, this isn’t productive for our two companies to be doing this.’ There was no threat from Microsoft. We never went to them and asked for a license. They’re the ones who started things off.
Bill Gates

[In 1988 on Microsoft and IBM predicting that OS/2 sales would overtake DOS within two years] During the next 10 years, millions of programmers and users will utilize this system.
Bill Gates



[On not being worried about the poor performance of OS/2 in the marketplace (It was more than twice as expensive as DOS)] We are patient people. All the progress is in the right direction.
Bill Gates

[On launching Windows 3 by spending $3 million for a one day extravaganza] The most extravagant, extensive and expensive software introduction ever.
Bill Gates

[On getting out the next version of OS/2 when it still had a lot of bugs in it] What incentive does Microsoft have to get it out the door before Windows 3.0?
Bill Gates

[After Window 3.0 is launched] OS/2 applications won’t have a chance.
Bill Gates

[On an FTC (Federal Trade Commission) investigation)] Every question in the case, every document requested, related only to the IBM-Microsoft announcement.
Bill Gates

[On Mitch Kapor the founder of Lotus saying ‘Gates has clearly won, the revolution is over, and the free-wheeling innovation in the software industry has ground to a halt. For me it’s the Kingdom of the Dead.’] Mitch is obviously down on me. I mean ‘Kingdom of the Dead?’ Where do I go from there?
Bill Gates

[On the FTC probe] There’s not truth to what they [critics] are saying. And whenever someone asks me about this thing I say ‘Just get somebody who is willing to put their name in print with these lies, because they are just direct lies.’ You can slander people behind the scenes a lot. But this time somebody might be caught red-handed because this is just out and out baloney.
Bill Gates

[On whether he felt persecuted by the some of the anti-Microsoft sentiment at the time] No, I’ve developed a new view that being successful is not a fun thing sometimes. There is just a phenomenon where people don’t like a company as successful as ours.
Bill Gates

[On Microsoft’s stock price being impacted by the negative publicity] Let’s say the stock dropped in half or a third. Big deal. I don’t have a short-term interest in that issue. Ask any Wall Street analyst which company never over promises what’s going to happen, always talks up the risks in their business and takes the long-term approach. It’s Microsoft. Besides, I have an infinite amount of money. I would still order the same hamburger. Believe me I’m not thinking about the stock price. I’m thinking about software products.
Bill Gates

[To Heidi Roizen] Heidi, don’t ever tell me anything you don’t want me to use against you.
Bill Gates



[To then CEO Philippe Kahn of Borland] We’re making a deal with Ashton-Tate, but you don’t have to worry.
Bill Gates

I contend technology breakthroughs can happen by extending what we already have.
Bill Gates

[On a Chinese Wall existing within Microsoft being a creation of the media and not Microsoft] There is no Chinese Wall.
Bill Gates

Microsoft is spending millions to defend features contained in every popular window system on the market and to help set the boundaries of where copyrights should and should not be applied.
Bill Gates

I think it is absurd that the lawsuit is taking so long… Our view that we almost certainly will prevail remains unchanged.
Bill Gates

We will not attack IBM as a company and even our public attack on OS/2 will be very professional.
Bill Gates

Eventually, we will need to have a neutral relationship with IBM. For the next 24 months, it may be fairly cold… We can emerge as a better and stronger company and people won’t say we are the standard because IBM chose us.
Bill Gates

[On a breakup with IBM would mean Microsoft would no longer have to accept IBM’s] Poor code, poor design and other overhead.
Bill Gates

[On an alliance between Apple and IBM during John Sculley days] There’s no way anybody can feel bad about something like that because we need more cooperation in this industry. [Later at the end of 1991 IBM reported a loss of $2.8 billion, its first deficit ever. Whilst Microsoft reported profits were up 55 percent and revenues up 48 percent during the last three months of 1991.]
Bill Gates

[More on the deal between Apple and IBM] You’ve taken everything that’s unique to Apple and put it in this joint venture. What’s left… Apple has sold it’s birth-right. That’s sad.
Bill Gates



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