Steve Ballmer's Quotes

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Accessible design is good design.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We will make our products work out of the box.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.