-- "Yesterday, one of my fine competitors, Scott McNealy, was here talking about the ring market, digital rings. And everybody always says Microsoft is trying to do everything. So I think it's important to state that this is one market that Microsoft will not be involved in." Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, Jan. 10, 1998.

-- "The whole PC industry has come together around this launch. Windows XP is the most powerful, fastest, most reliable operating system we have ever done. We've poured literally billions of dollars of development into this new product. That was based on the feedback we had from our users, based on a vision of new activities that the PC could enable. The new security is very important. The privacy control is important. The messaging for real-time connections is a foundation. The new personal digital experiences; really we'll look back and say it's common sense, these are the ways that people deal with information. Together with Office XP, Windows XP will set a new standard for business." Windows XP launch, Oct. 25, 2001, New York.

-- "We are living in a phenomenal age. If we can spend the early decades of the 21st century finding approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits and recognition for business, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce poverty in the world. The task is open-ended. It will never be finished. But a passionate effort to answer this challenge will help change the world. I'm excited to be part of it." World Economic Forum, Jan. 24, 2008, Davos, Switzerland.

-- "Whenever new technologies come along, parents have a legitimate concern about how it's being used. And the Internet had to be high on the list there. You know, my oldest is 11, so we haven't quite gotten into the toughest years in terms of, you know, having Facebook accounts and spending a massive amount of time instant messaging. But I'm sure that's ahead. And we tended to keep our computers at home out in the open so that as the kids are doing things on the computer, they know we're going to be walking by at any point. And by doing it that way, we've avoided having to have much in the way of hard limits, either in terms of time or specific things. We're just all involved in seeing what's going on and talking about what those things are." Remarks to the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, March 12, 2008, Washington, D.C.

-- "Certainly when I was in high school, the computer was a very daunting thing, people talked about taking those punch cards you get in the mail and putting staples in them, so you could defeat that evil machine that was always sending you bills that didn't seem to be correct. And nobody thought of it as a tool of empowerment." University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Feb. 24, 2004.

-- "If I had to say what is the thing that I feel best about, it's being involved in this whole software revolution and what comes out of that, because you can go all over the world and go into schools and see these computers being used and go into hospitals and see them being used, and see how they're tools for sharing information that hopefully leads to more peaceful conditions, and just the great research advances that come out of that." Stanford University, April 25, 2002, Palo Alto, Calif.

-- "When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have. We talked about a computer on every desk and in every home. It's been amazing to see so much of that dream become a reality and touch so many lives. I never imagined what an incredible and important company would spring from those original ideas." News conference announcing plans for full-time philanthropy work and part-time Microsoft work, June 15, 2006, Redmond, Wash..