Microsoft has had its success by doing low-cost products and constantly improving those products and we've really redefined the IT industry to be something that's about a tool for individuals.
We're responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software - that's something we brought to computing. And so it's a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don't get in the way of that dream.
Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress.
I admire leaders in science, people who really figure things out like Richard Fineman or people who work on vaccines, tons of people working on [the] HIV vaccine. There's leaders in business, people like Warren Buffett, who've got a certain approach they take that are pretty amazing. There [are] product innovators like Steve Jobs was, where he gets behind a concept and does a fantastic job.
The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.
If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.
We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.
Microsoft is a company that manages imagination.
The only role other than paying their taxes, whatever those are, the only role for philanthropy broadly - of which the rich should give disproportionately - the more, the better - and I think there is a positive trend in that direction - there are certain risk-taking things, like trying out a new type of charter school or funding a new kind of medicine.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism-if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. ... You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
