Steve Ballmer Quotes

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.

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.

I want to express my deepest condolences at the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary. My heart goes out to his family, everyone at Apple and everyone who has been touched by his work.

I like to tell people that all of our products and business will go through three phases. There's vision, patience, and execution.

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

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.

Accessible design is good design.

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.

Accessible design is good design - it benefits people who don't have disabilities as well as people who do. Accessibility is all about removing barriers and providing the benefits of technology for everyone.

There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.

The world is changing, but so is Microsoft.

You get some success. You run into some walls...it's how tenacious you are, how irrepressible, how ultimately optimistic and tenacious you are about it that will determine your success.

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.

Computer science is the operating system for all innovation.

I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.

Developers, developers, developers, developers.

The way I do things I usually always prefer to have a very clear strategy and be very focused. At the same time to be very rock solid, and crisp in execution.

Developers, developers, developers...

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.

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

Any idea that turns out to be truly great can be harvested for tens of years. On the other hand, if you want to continue to be great, you've got to bet on new things, big, bold bets.

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

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

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.

My wife spent a lot of time on what we do from a civic contribution giving perspective, for a number of years, I've really joined her in that. We're focused on issues in the United States, particularly issues with people who have been trapped in neighborhoods in what I might call intergenerational poverty.

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

There's a huge crowd out there that basically will go nuts recommending to every coach on the planet, "Hey, coach, I've been playing with the analytics. I think you should do X, Y, and Z."

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.

I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

We'll get a chance to go through this [Apple versus Microsoft debate] again in phones and music players. There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

I think good ideas are usually better done quickly than slowly.

Our goal in making these changes is to enable Microsoft to achieve greater agility in managing the incredible growth ahead and executing our software-based services strategy.

Eventually the Internet will be accessed by PC, television, and wireless devices.

500 dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine.

We're going to try to do more to communicate the value of activation to customers in addition to making the process simpler and more consistent.

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.

It's always great when you get a lot of people pushing themselves to do better, be better, invent better, better serve, better lead customers in new directions.

I loved every minute of my time at Microsoft, but I had always envisioned having another phase of life just because I thought that would be interesting. It had never been my plan to work until I literally didn't want to do anything and then hang it up.

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.

The lifeblood of our business is that R&D spend. There's nothing that flows through a pipe or down a wire or anything else. We have to continuously create new innovation that lets people do something they didn't think they could do the day before.

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

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

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

The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen.'

We're very focused in on outcomes for government with respect to the amount of tax that goes in and the amount of expenditures that go out.

At Microsoft I had many years of experience and history and seeing connections. With my direct reports, the job at Microsoft was to delegate and then be able to properly review, but not to micromanage. To have a way of connecting and integrating without getting in the way.

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

Analytics only goes so far. Basketball, more than baseball, for example, is really a team sport.

I'm going to f---ing kill Google.

The company [Microsoft] really has to chart a direction in mobile devices. Because if you're going to be mobile-first, cloud-first you really do need to have a sense of what you're doing in mobile devices. I had put the company on a path. The board as I was leaving took the company on a path by buying Nokia, they kind of went ahead with that after I told them I was going to go. The company, between me and the board, had taken that sort of view. Satya, he's certainly changed that. He needs to have a clear path forward. But I'm sure he'll get there.