Satya Nadella is the current CEO of Microsoft, moving in to replace Steve Balmer as of 2014. Born in India in 1967, he is also a well-known author and thought leader, and was co-author of the 2017 work, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone. In 2019, he was named Financial Times’ Person of the Year.
Under his leadership, the Microsoft brand grew in 2019 to enjoy more subscribers than Netflix and possesses more cloud computing revenue than Google.1 Satya Nadella obtained a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1988 from the Manipal Institute of Technology in India, before going on to complete an MS in computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the US.
Aside from his work at Microsoft, Nadella also serves on the board of directors for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He is well known and widely regarded for his pithy quotes on leadership, business, technology, inspiration, and success.
Here are some of his best!
Satya Nadella Quotes on Leadership
Satya Nadella Quotes on Learning
Satya Nadella Quotes on Business
Satya Nadella Quotes on Success
Satya Nadella Quotes on Motivation and Inspiration
Satya Nadella Quotes on Technology
Satya Nadella Quotes on Leadership
“Listen to your customers and your employees, they are the most important thing and define your business.” – Satya Nadella
“My approach is to lead with a sense of purpose and pride in what we do, not envy or combativeness.” – Satya Nadella
“Listening was the most important thing I accomplished each day because it would build the foundation of leadership for years to come.” – Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella Quotes on Learning
“Like anyone else, a lot of what I do and how I think has been shaped by my family and my overall life experience. Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. So family, curiosity, and hunger for knowledge all define me.”
– Satya Nadella
(In his first email to the employees of Microsoft as their new CEO.)
“Learning to fly is not pretty but flying is.” – Satya Nadella
“Be passionate and bold. Always keep learning. You stop doing useful things if you don’t learn.” – Satya Nadella
“If you are going to have a risk-taking culture, you can’t really look at every failure as a failure, you’ve got to be able to look at the failure as a learning opportunity.” – Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella Quotes on Business
“One of the key things in the tech business, in particular, is that you need to be able to push boundaries.”
– Satya Nadella
(In a 2017 interview with BusinessInsider.com)
“The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.” – Satya Nadella
“Technologies will come and go, so you need to be able to both ask and answer the question: What do you do as a company, why do you exist?” – Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella Quotes on Success
“When I think about my career, my successes are built on learning from failures.” – Satya Nadella
“The way I measure my life is ‘Am I better than I was last year?’” – Satya Nadella
“Success can cause people to unlearn the habits that made them successful in the first place.” – Satya Nadella
“You renew yourself every day. Sometimes you’re successful, sometimes you’re not, but it’s the average that counts.” – Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella Quotes on Motivation and Inspiration
“I truly believe that each of us must find meaning in our work. The best work happens when you know that it’s not just work, but something that will improve other people’s lives.” – Satya Nadella
“I’m also grounded in our challenges, in fact, that’s the adventure which creates the competitive zeal in me to do great work.” – Satya Nadella
“Our mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more is really a look back to the very creation of Microsoft.” – Satya Nadella
“The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.” – Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella Quotes on Technology
“Our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation.” – Satya Nadella
“This is a software-powered world.” – Satya Nadella
“You’re trying to take something that can be described in many, many sentences and pages of prose, but you can convert it into a couple of lines of poetry and you still get the essence, so it’s that compression. The best code is poetry.” – Satya Nadella
“Every time you think all the technology that had been created already, all you have to do is look around and then there’s someone new who’s born with a new idea.” – Satya Nadella
“Over the next 10 years, we’ll reach a point where nearly everything has become digitized.” – Satya Nadella
Quotes on Microsoft
Satya Nadella is not the only famous name at Microsoft to become established as a thought leader (think giants like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer) – and a source of inspiration for entrepreneurs, managers, and business leaders around the world. Here we’ve compiled some of the most notable and most-shared quotes from current and former Microsoft leaders:
“The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it’s Microsoft Office or Windows, it’s pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.” – Bill Gates
“We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference. – Steve Ballmer
“This is a critical time for the industry and for Microsoft. Make no mistake, we are headed for greater places — as technology evolves and we evolve with and ahead of it. Our job is to ensure that Microsoft thrives in a mobile and cloud-first world.” – Satya Nadella
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” – Bill Gates
“The world is changing, but so is Microsoft.” – Steve Ballmer
“This culture [Microsoft’s culture] needs to be a microcosm of the world we hope to create outside the company. One where builders, makers, and creators achieve great things. But, equally important, one where every individual can be their best self, where diversity of skin color, gender, religion, and sexual orientation is understood and celebrated.”
― Satya Nadella, from Hit Refresh