I'm very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There's so much opportunity. Let's just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.

We will make our products work out of the box.

I don't know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me.

Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards.

I think it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible for anyone to try and break up Microsoft.

Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we've had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you're really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.

Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.

Our mail product, Hotmail, is the market leader globally.

I have never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life.

And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that's there.

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.

Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.

I think our leadership team is a highly accountable leadership team.

Our company has to be a company that enables its people.

My children - in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.

Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We'll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I'm very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.

So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.

We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.

I come back to the same thing: We've got the greatest pipeline in the company's history in the next 12 months, and we've had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we're predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year '06.

All companies of any size have to continue to push to make sure you get the right leaders, the right team, the right people to be fast acting, and fast moving in the marketplace. We've got great leaders, and we continue to attract and promote great new leaders.

Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we're in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There's no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.

I'm very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There's so much opportunity. Let's just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.

What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question 'Can we trust Microsoft?'

I have lots of sources of information about what's going on at the company. I think I have a pretty good pulse on where we are and what people are thinking.

We've grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.

I'm not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative.

Accessible design is good design.

If we see an opportunity in the software/hardware seam, we're going to take it.

The NBA has made it clear they want fan bases to be able to keep their teams.

Computer science is the operating system for all innovation.

It's how tenacious you are that will determine your success.

We have a tenacity and a persistence and patience to stay after it and stay after it and stay after it.

That co-operation and peace rather than industrial strife and strikes will best promote the prosperity of the employees the company and all of the people and even strengthen the nation.

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.

It's my father's legacy. My father's view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they're up to.

Amnesty is the magnet. Other magnets that you mentioned are anchor babies who get benefits in this country and employer deductions for employees, even if they are here illegally, which Mr. King is addressing.

I am also committed to providing city employees with housing assistance.

In other restaurants you'll see employees signing to each other, since we also hire many deaf men and women.

Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.

Look at the Quakers - they were excellent business people that never lied, never stole; they cared for their employees and the community which gave them the wealth. They never took more money out than they put back in.

The majority of Americans receive health insurance coverage through their employers, but with rising health care costs, many small businesses can no longer afford to provide coverage for their employees.

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

By providing our school districts with direct access to criminal information records, we can help ensure timely and complete information on prospective school employees.

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.