Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don't evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, 'how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?' April 30, 1998.

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.

About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.

When we have the information highway, I'll put it out there. Everybody who wants to pay, I don't know, one cent, can see what movies I'm watching and what books I'm reading and certain other information. If I'm still interesting, I'll rack up dollars as people access that part of the highway. 1994.

If something's expensive to develop, and somebody's not going to get paid, it won't get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not? 1980.

I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money.

The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.