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

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.

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.

Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I'll show you a poorly uniformed leader.

I was a gang leader. Although, it was a gang for defensive purposes. It was not a gang to sell drugs.

But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair.

I am not the kind of leader who pontificates about what should be done - I don't operate on scenarios, and I am not a prophet.

Tony Blair has turned his back on the principles he claimed he believed in before he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with George W. Bush. He was an entirely different kind of leader.

Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.

Obama likes to quote great men but will never be a great man himself. I can't stand it when our leader goes around apologizing for who we are.

The 'transition' involves the transfer of power from one president to another. In recent times, the incoming President has designated a Director of the Transition, a team leader, to oversee and administer the orderly transfer of power.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Today America lost a great elder statesman, a committed public servant, and leader of the Senate. And today I lost a treasured friend. Ted Kennedy was an iconic, larger than life United States senator whose influence cannot be overstated. Many have come before, and many will come after, but Ted Kennedy's name will always be remembered as someone who lived and breathed the United States Senate and the work completed within its chamber.

The fountain of youth with the youthful young musician is one meaning, and the fountain of youth with the youthful energy of the leader is another meaning.

When you have a clearly open homosexual scout leader, the scouts are going to talk about it. And they're not there to learn about that. They're there to learn about what it means to be loyal and trustworthy and thrifty.