Bill Gates

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in ...
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The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really ...
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I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your ...
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Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as ...
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Africa is on the rise.

3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we're getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we've ever had before.

A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it's less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

Africa is on the rise.

AIDS itself is subject to incredible stigma.

A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren't dependent on Washington doing something different.

Although I don't have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

Americans move more than 10 times over the course of a lifetime.

Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.

Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass - the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that - so they're kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not.

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.

Being able to see an activity log of where a kid has been going on the Internet is a good thing.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right.

Being flooded with information doesn't mean we have the right information or that we're in touch with the right people.

Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don't think over time that's a good way to go. I'm a huge believe in digital currency... but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I'm not involved in Bitcoin.

By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.

By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.

By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited... The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.

Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn't necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

Certainly, the Windows share of servers is strong.

Certainly there's a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.

Certainly I'll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I've gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it's not an 'us versus them,' it's an 'us and them' type scenario.

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.

China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

Common Core is a big win for education.

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid, now it's aid-neutral.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I've learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that's what kids are playing. That's what people are talking about.

Digital technology has several features that can make it much easier for teachers to pay special attention to all their students.

Digital reading will completely take over. It's lightweight and it's fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.

DOS is ugly and interferes with users' experience.

Driving up the value of the advertising is a big commitment for Microsoft.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity - the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.

Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that's associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.

Eventually we'll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you're glad you did it, or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it's true.

Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.

For a highly motivated learner, it's not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you're a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

For Africa to move forward, you've really got to get rid of malaria.

Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.

Given how few young people actually read the newspaper, it's a good thing they'll be reading a newspaper on a screen.

Google's done a super good job on search, Apple's done a great job on the IPod.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.

Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work.

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies.

I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

I am results-oriented.

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm - not all - that religion used to fill.

I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, there's a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!

I don't generally read a lot of fiction.

I didn't used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.

I don't have a magic formula for prioritizing the world's problems.

I don't like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

I don't think culture is something you can describe.

I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence.

I don't think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

I don't think there's a... boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he's got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

I have a nice office. I have a nice house... So I'm not denying myself some great things. I just don't happen to have expensive hobbies.

I get more spam than anyone I know.

I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

I know there's a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that's fine with me.

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I'm still fanatical, but now I'm a little less fanatical.

I meet people overseas that know five languages - that the only language I'm comfortable in is English.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn't want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

I spend a lot of time reading.

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.

I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has.

I think there will be PCs at every price point.

I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it's just such a dramatic success.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things.

I would counsel people to go to college, because it's one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn't cool.

If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was 'satisfactory,' I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?

If I hadn't given my money away, I'd have had more than anyone else on the planet.

If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.

If you count E-mail, I'm on the Internet all day, every day.

If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that's a good discussion. Maybe that's the way to help close the deficit.

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.

If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn't be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.

If you're low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn't seem entirely fair.

If you're a person struggling to eat and stay healthy, you might have heard about Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali, but you'll never have heard of Bill Gates.

If you're using first-class land for biofuels, then you're competing with the growing of food. And so you're actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.

If you've found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

I'm a geek.

I'm an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.

I'm certainly well taken care of in terms of food and clothes.

I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.

I'm going to retain a lot of Microsoft's stock.

I'm going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.

I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

I'm never fully satisfied with any Microsoft product.

I'm not a macroeconomics person.

In 80% of the world, energy will be bought where it is economic. You have to help the rest of the world get energy at a reasonable price.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software.

In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.

In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn't been the case for teaching.

In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance... you thrive on that.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that's safer, doesn't require us to go around the world to get all our oil.

In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.

In low-income countries, getting to a health post is hard. It's very expensive.

In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there's such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.

In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn't been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A's without taking a book home. I didn't go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That's quite clear.

In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can't you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that's different from a California textbook that's different from a Massachusetts textbook. That's very expensive.

In the old generation, if one kid bought a PlayStation 2 and the other kid bought an Xbox, at his house you played PlayStation, at your house you played Xbox. Now that it's online, all those early buyers who... you want to play with, they've got their reputation online of who they are and how good they are at these games.

In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you're going to be 20 years from now is how well you're doing in your education system.

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition - put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes - is improving because of innovation.

India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.

Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.

Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

It's easier to add things on to a PC than it's ever been before. It's one click, and boom, it comes down.

It's OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don't want them to catch up because we're slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

It's hard to improve public education - that's clear.

It's possible - you can never know - that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's sure going well for me, I must admit.

It's the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change - as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

I've always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

I've always been interested in science - one of my favourite books is James Watson's 'Molecular Biology of the Gene.'

I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don't want a legacy.

Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it 'tap-dancing to work.'

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That's not possible on $1 a day.

Measles will always show you if someone isn't doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.

Maintaining a consistent platform also helps improve product support - a significant problem in the software industry.

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It's not a popular position.

Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it's taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, 'Let's get out the camera and get that shot.' You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

Middle-income countries are the biggest users of GMOs. Places like Brazil.

Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.

Money has always been in politics. And I'm not sure you'd want money to be completely out of politics.

Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.

Most poor people live in the poorest countries.

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don't want to get malaria.

My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we've had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.

My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go.

My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

My wife thinks she's better than me at puzzles. I haven't given in on that one yet.

Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

Newspaper readership is still growing in India.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it's about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton. It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.