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By Almost Any Measure, The World Is Better Than It Has Ever Been. People Are Living Longer, Healthier Lives. Many Nations That Were Aid Recipients Are Now Self-sufficient. You Might Think That Such Striking Progress Would Be Widely Celebrated, But In Fact, Melinda And I Are Struck By How Many People Think The World Is Getting Worse. The Belief That The World Can’t Solve Extreme Poverty And Disease Isn’t Just Mistaken. It Is Harmful. That’s Why In This Year’s Letter We Take Apart Some Of The Myths That Slow Down The Work. The Next Time You Hear These Myths, We Hope You Will Do The Same.

-Bill Gates

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By Almost Any Measure,

Bill Gates

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By Almost Any Measure, The World Is Better Than It Has Ever Been. People Are Living Longer, Healthier Lives. Many Nations That Were Aid Recipients Are Now Self-sufficient. You Might Think That Such Striking Progress Would Be Widely Celebrated, But In Fact, Melinda And I Are Struck By How Many People Think The World Is Getting Worse. The Belief That The World Can’t Solve Extreme Poverty And Disease Isn’t Just Mistaken. It Is Harmful. That’s Why In This Year’s Letter We Take Apart Some Of The Myths That Slow Down The Work. The Next Time You Hear These Myths, We Hope You Will Do The Same.

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When Making Choices, Or Setting Policies About The Economy, Education Or Medicine, Society Is Best Served By Electing People Who Are Particularly Hardworking, Intelligent And Interested In Long-term Thinking.

Before You Were Born, Your Parents Weren't As Boring As They Are Now. They Got That Way From Paying Your Bills, Cleaning Your Clothes And Listening To You Talk About How Cool You Thought You Were. So Before You Save The Rain Forest From The Parasites Of Your Parent's Generation, Try Delousing The Closet In Your Own Room.

I Mean, If We Said Right Now, There's Somebody In The Next Room Who's Dying, Let's All Go Save Their Life, You Know, Everybody Would Just Get Up Immediately And Go Get Involved In That.

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 Have Drifted Away From Thinking About These Philanthropic Things. And It Was Only As The Wealth Got Large Enough And Melinda And I Had Talked About The View That Wealth Wasn't Something That Would Be Good To Just Pass To The Children.

I Am Results-oriented.

Who Can Afford To Do Professional Work For Nothing? What Hobbyist Can Put Three Man-years Into Programming, Finding All Bugs, Documenting His Product, And Distributing It For Free?

Given How Few Young People Actually Read The Newspaper, It's A Good Thing They'll Be Reading A Newspaper On A Screen.

If You Think Your Teacher Is Tough, Wait Till You Get A Boss.

In 1990, One In 10 Children Died Before The Age Of Five. That's Now Down To One In 20, And Vaccines Were The Single Biggest Factor In That. Had It Stayed At 10 Percent, 122 Million More Children Would Have Died.

Innovation Is Often The Hidden Thing, Because We Can't Put Numbers To It. And Yet It's The Thing That Defines The Way We Live, The Things We'd Like To Have For Everyone Whether It's Health Or Education.

The Vision Is Really About Empowering Workers Giving Them All The Information About What’s Going On So They Can Do A Lot More Than They’ve Done In The Past.

Well I Think Any Author Or Musician Is Anxious To Have Legitimate Sales Of Their Products, Partly So They're Rewarded For Their Success, Partly So They Can Go On And Do New Things.

The Only Definition By Which Americas Best Days Are Behind It Is On A Purely Relative Basis.

You Have To Be Willing To See That Sometimes The Governments Of These Poor Countries Don't Come Through. You Have To Think About That As A Constraint. How Do You Help Them Be Better? How Do You Come Up With Things That Actually Work, Even In Those Tough Situations.

Google's Done A Super Good Job On Search; Apple's Done A Great Job On The Ipod.

Over Time, Yes, Countries Will Need To Look At Specific Gmo Products Like They Look At Drugs Today, Where They Don't Approve Them All. They Look Hard At The Safety And The Testing. And They Make Sure That The Benefits Far Outweigh Any Of The Downsides.

Personally, I'd Like To See More Of Our Leaders Take A Technocratic Approach To Solving Our Biggest Problems.

Ridiculous Sums Of Money Can Be Confusing.

Your Customers Get Better When You Do.

Service Culture

I Think That Our Progress On Key Diseases Over The Next Several Decades Is Going To Be Pretty Amazing And So I Am Very Interested In That.

The Information Society Should Serve All Of Its Citizens, Not Only The Technically Sophisticated And Economically Privileged.

The U.s. Immigration Laws Are Bad - Really, Really Bad. I'd Say Treatment Of Immigrants Is One Of The Greatest Injustices Done In Our Government's Name.

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.

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.

The Aids Is A Disease That Is Hard To Talk About.

Innovation Is A Good Thing. The Human Condition - Put Aside Bioterrorism And A Few Footnotes - Is Improving Because Of Innovation.

Human Condition

So On The Demand Side [for Energy], There Have Been A Variety Of Policies That Globally Have Been Way Over $50 Billion A Year Of Tax Credits, Raising The Price Of Electricity Through Things Like Renewable Portfolio Standards, So The Total Amount Of Money That's Gone Into Sending A Price Signal To Push Up Demand Versus What Would Happen Without It Has Been Gigantic.

I Like My Job Because It Involves Learning. I Like Being Around Smart People Who Are Trying To Figure Out New Things. I Like The Fact That If People Really Try They Can Figure Out How To Invent Things That Actually Have An Impact.

Started From The Chair Hop Now We Here.

You Wish That You Could Move More Rapidly And You Have Setbacks. You Know, The Aids Epidemic Was A Huge Setback For Africa, And It's Only Through Generosity That We've Avoided That Just Completely Crippling An Entire Generation There.

People Who Feared Ibm Were Wrong, ... Technology Is Ever-changing.

[we In Microsoft] Are Not The Only Software Company But We Are A Great Software Company Doing Some Unique Work.

I Don't Have A Magic Formula For Prioritizing The World's Problems.

The Idea That You Encourage Companies To Take Their Innovative Thinkers And Think About The Most Needy - Even Beyond The Market Opportunities - That's Something That Appropriately Ought To Be Done.

Every Company Can Choose Whether To Lead Or Follow The Emerging Digital Trends.

The Job Was To Put Into A, A Computer With Only 4k Of Memory An Entire Basic Full Blown, Floating Point Basic And That's One Of The Greatest Programming Feats I've Ever Had A Chance To Work On.

You May Have Heard Of Black Friday And Cyber Monday. There's Another Day You Might Want To Know About: Giving Tuesday. The Idea Is Pretty Straightforward. On The Tuesday After Thanksgiving, Shoppers Take A Break From Their Gift-buying And Donate What They Can To Charity.

I'm A Big Believer That As Much As Possible, And There's Obviously Political Limitations, Freedom Of Migration Is A Good Thing.

The United States Has A Huge Budget Deficit So Taxes Are Going To Have To Go Up And I Certainly Agree They Should Go Up More On The Rich Than Everyone Else. That - That's Just Justice.

There Is This Broad, Broad Recognition Of How Technology Is Enabling New Things. Companies That Never Paid Attention To Computers In Any Form Now See Digital Technology As Creating Threats And Opportunities For Them.

The Greatest Thing You Can Do For Your Competition - Hire Poorly.

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.

In Low-income Countries, Getting To A Health Post Is Hard. It's Very Expensive.

In Three Years, Every Product My Company Makes Will Be Obsolete. The Only Question Is Whether We Will Make Them Obsolete Or Somebody Else Will.

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.

Depending On How Quickly You Get Ocean Rise, You Have People Who Live In River Deltas [at Risk]. Bangladesh Is Largely A River Delta, And The Rising Sea Level Means That When Storms Come In, The Human Sanitation Is Backing Up, The Ability To Farm, It's Destructive-type Situations Like You Saw In New Orleans With Katrina. You're Increasing The Frequency Of That Stuff In Low-lying Areas Fairly Dramatically.

The General Idea Of The Rich Helping The Poor, I Think, Is Important.

The World Won't Care About Your Self-esteem. The World Will Expect You To Accomplish Something Before You Feel Good About Yourself.

Every Three Years, We Have To Go To The Governments And Say, Okay, You Know You're Saving Millions Of Lives And Even Though Your Budgets Are Tight, Helping Africa Avoid This Disaster Really Is A Priority.

The Spread Of Online Information Isn't Just Good For Charities. It's Also Good For Donors. You Can Go To A Site Like Charity Navigator, Which Evaluates Nonprofits On Their Financial Health As Well As The Amount Of Information They Share About Their Work.

I'd Be Happy If I Could Think That The Role Of The Library Was Sustained And Even Enhanced In The Age Of The Computer.

It's Pretty Amazing To Go From A World Where Computers Were Unheard Of And Very Complex To Where They're A Tool Of Everyday Life.

When I Was Young I Liked Taking Tests. I Happened To Be Good At It. Certain Subjects Came Easily, Like Math. All The Science Stuff. I Would Just Read The Textbooks In The First Few Days Of Class.

Our Teachers Deserve Better Feedback.

I Think There Certainly Was A Milestone In The '90s With Regards To The Internet Achieving Critical Mass. There Were Several Magical Factors That Came Together: The Creation Of Html By Tim Berners-lee, The Drop In The Price Of Communications, And All The Pcs Out There That You Could Put This Software Into.

When Paul Allen And I Started Microsoft Over 30 Years Ago, We Had Big Dreams About Software. We Had Dreams About The Impact It Could Have.

I Am Not A Huge Gamer. My Son Knows A Lot More Than I Do About What Is Cool On Xbox. I Played Halo But The Sports Games That The Whole Family Can Use Are The Things I Use The Most. I Threw The Javelin Very Very Far!

The 'billionaire' Song Is What My Kids Tease Me With. They Sing It To Me. It's Funny.

We Have Two Other Countries, Pakistan And Afghanistan - Again It's The Instability That Is A Problem There. So Over The Next Several Years, We Expect To Drive The Number Of [polio] Cases Back Down To Zero Because That Is Likely To Be The Second Disease After Smallpox That We Completely Eradicate.

Measles Will Always Show You If Someone Isn't Doing A Good Job On Vaccinations. Kids Will Start Dying Of Measles.

In Almost Every Job Now, People Use Software And Work With Information To Enable Their Organization To Operate More Effectively.

Bioterrorism Is Like Earthquakes, You Should Think In Order Of Magnitudes. If You Can Kill 10 People That's A One, 100 People That's A Two... Bioterrorism Is The Thing That Can Give You Not Just Sixes, But Sevens, Eights And Nines.

Capitalism Has Shortfalls. It Doesn't Necessarily Take Care Of The Poor, And It Underfunds Innovation, So We Have To Offset That.

If I Think Something's A Waste Of Time Or Inappropriate I Don't Wait To Point It Out. I Say It Right Away. It's Real Time. So You Might Hear Me Say 'that's The Dumbest Idea I Have Ever Heard' Many Times During A Meeting.

We Certainly See Opportunities In Vietnam For Talented People To Have Jobs In The It Sector, Including The Improvement Of The Efficiency Of The Economy And The Government.

If We [the Usa] Don't Innovate In Education, It's Literally Going To Mean Less People Get To Go Have That Education At A Time When More People Are Going To Want It. We've Got To Put Courses Out On The Web, We've Got To Put Interactive Learning Out On The Web.

There's No Such Thing As Going To A Soapbox And Saying, 'the Government's Corrupt,' And Not Having The Intelligence Service See Your Face. In The Digital World, That Can Be Done.

Intelligence Services

In Fact, Batteries Haven't Improved Over The Last 100 Years As Much As They Would Need To In Order To Make That Happen. So I'm Invested In A Lot Of Battery Companies - And There's A Lot That Exists I'm Not In. They're All Having A Tough Time Achieving It.

It Is Really Gratifying, For Example, To Visit India Now And See That Because They've Had Good Educational Institutions, And They've Had A Focus On It, There Are More And More People In India Participating In The World Economy.

The Future Of Windows Is To Let The Computer See, Listen And Even Learn.

Typically, Your Corporate E-mail Account Is Not, Today, That Spam-targeted. It's More The Free E-mail Accounts That Are Spam-targeted.

I Never Took A Day Off In My Twenties. Not One. And I'm Still Fanatical, But Now I'm A Little Less Fanatical.

India Just Went 3 Years With No Cases [of Polio]. Pakistan Is Our Toughest Location Right Now Because Some Parts Of The Taliban Have Not Allowed Vaccinators To Come In And Have Even Attacked Vaccinators. We Are Hopeful This Will Get Resolved Since No One Wants Their Kid To Be Paralyzed. I Spend A Lot Of Time Making Sure The Polio Campaign Is Doing The Best It Can. We Have Great Computer Models That Help Guide Our Activities.

Good Programmers Stay Open Minded To That Even Though There Is No Obvious Way To Improve What They've Done They... They Keep Looking And They Listen To What Other People Have To Say.

You Can Always Think Of Something Like The Xbox 360 As A Super Set-top Box That Can Do Everything The Set-top Box Does, But Then Have The Graphics To Do The Games As Well.

Whatever They Announce, They Announce. They're In Their Honeymoon Period, And Anything They Announce Gets Hype ... They Will Obviously Branch Out Beyond Internet Search, But I Think The Expectations Won't Live Up To Reality.

I'm Truly Saddened To Learn Of Steve Jobs' Death. The World Rarely Sees Someone Who Has Had The Profound Impact Steve Has Had, The Effects Of Which Will Be Felt For Many Generations To Come. For Those Of Us Lucky Enough To Get To Work With Him, It's Been An Insanely Great Honor. I Will Miss Steve Immensely.

In Programming When You're Making A Change You Have To Know All The Affected Places, And You Have To Be Able To Model In Your Head What The Performance Impact Will Be.

It's Hard To Improve Public Education - That's Clear.

Public Education

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.

Expectations Are A Form Of First-class Truth: If People Believe It, It's True.

If You Get Health, Then You Have Opportunity For Literacy. Health First, Then Literacy. Once You Have Literacy, Then You Have A Chance To Bring In The New Tools Of Communication. Let People Reach Out And Have Access To The Latest Advances.

An Important Re-engineering Principle Is That Companies Should Focus On Their Core Competence And Outsource Everything Else.

It's Not Easy To Remember, But Ibm Was The Computer Industry When I Was Growing Up. You Loved 'em. You Hated 'em. You Knew What They Were Doing. They Had Set A Standard For Mainframes. They Also Set A Standard For Great Sales Focus And Heavy Product R & D.

I Don't Think There's Anything Unique About Human Intellience. All The Nuerons In The Brain That Make Up Perceptions And Emotions Operate In A Binary Fashion.

I'm Going To Save My Public Voice Largely For The Issues Where I Have Some Depth.

I'm Serious When I Do My Work. I'm Not Serious When I'm Home With My Kids.

The Belief That The World Is Getting Worse, That We Can't Solve Extreme Poverty And Disease, Isn't Just Mistaken. It Is Harmful.

Every New Change Forces All The Companies In An Industry To Adapt Their Strategies To That Change.

Me And My Dad Are The Biggest Promoters Of An Estate Tax In The Us. It's Not A Popular Position.

I Believe In Innovation And That The Way You Get Innovation Is You Fund Research And You Learn The Basic Facts.

Unfortunately, The Highly Curious Student Is A Small Percentage Of The Kids.

At Some Point, That Risk-taking Private Capital Can Take Over, And Have Patents And Trade Secrets And Things That Let Them Lead The Way, Which Happened With The Steam Engine And Some Other Things, Although With Energy, The Time Of Adoption Is A Lot Longer Than It Is With, Say, It Products Or Even Medical Advances, Like Drugs And Vaccines.

One Thing People Underestimate Is How Markets Don't Allow Anyone To Do Anything Except Make Better And Better Products. There's Not Much Leeway. The World Is A Lot More Competitive Than Most People Think, Particularly In A High-technology Area. If A Company Takes Its Eye Off Improving Its Products, If It Tries To Do Anything That Would Be Viewed As An Exercise Of Power, It'll Be Displaced Very Rapidly.

This Is A Fantastic Time To Be Entering The Business World, Because Business Is Going To Change More In The Next 10 Years Than It Has In The Last 50.

Windows Is Probably The Most Important Product In The Entire Pc Industry. Everything We Do In Terms Of Supporting Touch, New Hardware, Accessibility Has Incredible Impact.

To Be A Good Professional Engineer, Always Start To Study Late For Exams Because It Teaches You How To Manage Time And Tackle Emergencies.

I Don't Generally Read A Lot Of Fiction.

If Your Culture Doesn't Like Geeks, You Are In Real Trouble.

It’s Useful To Compare Our Preparations For Epidemics With Our Preparations For War.

Energy Is Very Primal Stuff And There Are A Lot Of Leads That Are Promising, Still At A Fairly Risky Stage, But Over The Next Decade Some Of These Breakthrough Approaches Are Going To Pay Out, And U.s. Research And U.s. Leadership On This Should Be Part Of How It Gets Solved.

Don't Let Complexity Stop You. Be Activists. Take On The Big Inequities. It Will Be One Of The Great Experiences Of Your Lives.

In The Same Way That When The Car Got Going, People Thought It Would Be An Electric Car, People Thought It Would Be A Steam Car.

Everyone Needs A Coach. It Doesn't Matter Whether You're A Basketball Player, A Tennis Player, A Gymnast Or A Bridge Player.

Does The Universe Exist Only For Me? It's Possible. If So, It's Sure Going Well For Me, I Must Admit.

Optimistic Life

The Most Important Work I Got A Chance To Be Involved In, No Matter What I Do, Is The Personal Computer... I Even Knew Not To Get Married Until Later Because I Was So Obsessed With It. That's My Life's Work.

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.

The Fight Against Aids In China Is Already Well Underway. The Chinese Government And Other Funders Are Providing Major Support, And They'll Continue To Bear Primary Responsibility For Delivering Prevention And Treatment.

There's Always Been A Lot Of Information About Your Activities. Every Phone Number You Dial, Every Credit-card Charge You Make. It's Long Since Passed That A Typical Person Doesn't Leave Footprints.

So Not Only Are We Saving Lives Now, We're Creating The Incentive For The Breakthroughs That Over The Next Generation Will Mean We Can Take Aids, Malaria And Tb And Bring Those Numbers Dramatically Down.

Only Through Focus Can You Do World-class Things, No Matter How Capable You Are.

People Often Overestimate What Will Happen In The Next Two Years And Underestimate What Will Happen In Ten.

Change The Boundaries Of Business.

The Misconception That Aid Falls Straight Into The Hands Of Dictators Largely Stems From The Cold War Era.

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.

People Always Fear Change. People Feared Electricity When It Was Invented, Didn't They?

The Best Teacher Is Very Interactive.

Bridge Is One Of The Last Games In Which The Computer Is Not Better.

If You're Too Focused On Your Current Business, It's Hard To Change And Concentrate On Innovating.

President [george] Bush Made The U.s. Absolutely The Leader, Between Its Own Pepfar, And It's Been By Far The Biggest Global Fund Donor. That's A Legacy.

There Are People Who Don't Like Capitalism, And People Who Don't Like Pcs. But There's No-one Who Likes The Pc Who Doesn't Like Microsoft.

I Went Public Too Soon. Stay Private As Long As You Can.

I Believe Os/2 Is Destined To Be The Most Important Operating System, And Possibly Program, Of All Time.

We Are Not Even Close To Finishing The Basic Dream Of What The Pc Can Be.

I Read An Hour Almost Every Night. It's Part Of Falling Asleep.

Being Maniacal About Something Is Very Helpful.

I Believe Innovation Is The Most Powerful Force For Change In The World.

The Most Important Thing Was The Creation Of A... A Standard, Where Hundreds Of Companies Build Hardware That Can All Run The Same Software.

The Ceo's Role In Raising A Company's Corporate Iq Is To Establish An Atmosphere That Promotes Knowledge Sharing And Collaboration.

The Huge Turnout For Live 8 Here And Around The World Proves That Thanks To The Leadership From People Like Tony Blair And Gordon Brown The World Is Beginning To Demand More Action On Global Health And Poverty.

Around The World

Bill Gates' Success Factors For Microsoft 1. Long-term Approach 2. Passion For Products And Technology 3. Teamwork 4. Results 5. Customer Feedback 6. Individual Excellence

I Want To Make Clear That We Respect The Role Of Government In Our Legal Andeconomic System.

Two Out Of Every Five People On Earth Today Owe Their Lives To The Higher Crop Outputs That Fertilizer Has Made Possible.

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.

Funny Inspirational

There Are Websites That Any Government Wants To Block. The Truth About The Internet Is That It's Extremely Hard To Block Anything - Extremely Hard. You'll Never Get Perfect Blocking.

I Think Ebola Is A Great Example Of Where The World Really Needs To Come Together. The Three Countries Where This Outbreak Took Place Have Had A Lot Of Civil War, Very Weak Health Systems. And So, It Did Take A While For People To Understand ....that Eventually What We Saw Was A Very Unique Ebola Epidemic. I Think It Is Quite Impressive What's Being Pulled Together, And I Think We Will Be Able To Get This Under Control.

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.

A Company Needs To Have Good Business Reflexes, To Be Able To Marshal Its Forces In A Crisis Or In Response To Any Unplanned Event.

I Definitely Think Leaving Kids Massive Amounts Of Money Is Not A Favor To Them.

We Were Young, But We Had Good Advice And Good Ideas And Lots Of Enthusiasm.

The Us Spends More On Energy R&d Than All Other Countries Put Together, And I Personally Consider It Quite Inadequate.

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.

Depending On Where You Live, Cooking, Sex And Pooping Are Either 3 Of Life's Pleasures Or What Kills You

If You're Asking Whether I Intentionally Mess Up My Hair, No, I Don't. And Certain Things, Like My Freckles, They're Just There. I Don't Do Anything Consciously. I Suppose I Could Get Contact Lenses. I Suppose I Could Comb My Hair More Often.

American Dependence On Oil Has Only Gone Up As We've Gone Through Various Crises And Not Invested In R&d.

Nuclear Energy, In Terms Of An Overall Safety Record, Is Better Than Other Energy.

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.

It Was Really Phenomenal [warren Buffett Donation]. It Grew Out Of The Friendship That We Had And The Fact That His Plan To Have His Wife Run The Foundation And Give Things Away Changed When She Tragically Died.

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.

Microsoft Has Had Clear Competitors In The Past. It's A Good Thing We Have Museums To Document That.

There Is No Author Whose Books I Look Forward To More Than Vaclav Smil.

I Know That Historically Our Foundation Has Had Great Relations With All The Administrations.[bill] Clinton Administration Did A Lot Of Outreach. The Greatest Rise In U.s. Foreign Aid Was Under The [george] Bush Administration, That's Where We Got The Aids Initiative, Which Is Called Pepfar.

A Great Lathe Operator Commands Several Times The Wage Of An Average Lathe Operator, But A Great Writer Of Software Code Is Worth 10,000 Times The Price Of An Average Software Writer.

The Most Interesting Biofuel Efforts Avoid Using Land That's Expensive And Has High Opportunity Costs. They Do This By Getting Onto Other Types Of Land, Or Taking Advantage Of Byproducts That Aren't Used In The Food Chain Today, Or By Intercropping.

You Will Not Make $60,000 A Year Right Out Of High School. You Won't Be A Vice-president With A Car Phone Until You Earn Both.

Nobody Believes In Completely Unadulterated Capitalism.

Philanthropy, Although It's Tiny Compared To The Government, It's 2% Of The Us Economy, Which Is The Largest Percentage, Other Than The Middle East.

Sometimes We Do Get Taken By Surprise. For Example, When The Internet Came Along, We Had It As A Fifth Or Sixth Priority. It Wasn't Like Somebody Told Me About It And I Said, "i Don't Know How To Spell That." I Said, "yeah, I've Got That On My List, So I'm Okay." But There Came A Point When We Realized It Was Happening Faster And Was A Much Deeper Phenomenon Than Had Been Recognized In Our Strategy.

I Studied Every Thing But Never Topped.... But Today The Toppers Of The Best Universities Are My Employees

I See Little Commercial Potential For The Internet For At Least Ten Years.

Imagine The Disincentive To Software Development If After Months Of Work Another Company Could Come Along And Copy Your Work And Market It Under Its Own Name...without Legal Restraints To Such Copying, Companies Like Apple Could Not Afford To Advance The State Of The Art.

Some People, Through Luck And Skill, End Up With A Lot Of Assets. If You're Good At Kicking A Ball, Writing Software, Investing In Stocks, It Pays Extremely Well.

A Bad Strategy Will Fail No Matter How Good Your Information Is. And Lame Execution Will Stymie A Good Strategy. If You Do Enough Things Poorly, You'll Go Out Of Business.

Any Machine That Can Run A Browser Is Not Thin. The Browser Has To Be The Thickest Application Man Has Ever Invented, And It's Getting Thicker Faster Than Anything Ever Development By Man.

Microsoft's Philosophy Is To 'do Things Better.' And Vista Has Given Us Lots Of Opportunity To Do That.

One Of The Statistics That Always Amazes Me Is The Approval Of The Chinese Government, Not Elected, Is Over 80 Percent. The Approval Of The U.s. Government, Fully Elected, Is 19 Percent. Well, We Elected These People And They Didn't Elect Those People. Isn't It Supposed To Be Different? Aren't We Supposed To Like The People That We Elected?

The Nuclear Approach I'm Involved In Is Called A Traveling-wave Reactor, Which Uses Waste Uranium For Fuel. There's A Lot Of Things That Have To Go Right For That Dream To Come True - Many Decades Of Building Demo Plants, Proving The Economics Are Right. But If It Does, You Could Have Cheaper Energy With No Co2 Emissions.

Software Was The Key Element That Would Determine How Useable And How Broadly Applicable The Machine Was.

To Be Born Poor Is Not Our Fault, But To Die Poor Is Crime

I Think Given All The Different Imperatives - Getting Energy To Africa, Security Of Energy, Climate Change, That We Should Be Spending Half As Much As We Spend On Health, Which Will Get You All The Way Up To $15 Billion - The Health People Don't Like It When Things Get Compared To Their Number.

I Don't Think There's Anything Unique About Human Intelligence.

Something Like Windows Is Still An Unbelievable Asset But Because The World Is Somewhat Phone-centric, It's An Asset That Has To Be Managed Very Carefully To Make Sure That It's Extended, And There Are Very Interesting Things That Are Being Done With That.

We Will Never Make A 32-bit Operating System.

Operating Systems

Don't Wallow In Failure. Instead, Learn From It.

Even With Cameras Being Very Cheap, One Thing That Researchers Noticed Was That You Look Really Bad In A Videoconference Image Because The Lighting Is Bad And You Get Shadows And Things.

Leaders Need To Provide Strategy And Direction And To Give Employees Tools That Enable Them To Gather Information And Insight From Around The World. Leaders Shouldn't Try To Make Every Decision.

Learning From Mistakes And Constantly Improving Products Is A Key In All Successful Companies.

The Internet? We Are Not Interested In It

With A Public Library Card In Your Hand, You Have Access To The Internet And A World Of Opportunities.

When You Have The Medical Advances You Think Will They Be Available To Everyone. Will They Not Just Be For The Rich World Or Even Just The Rich People And The Rich World? Will They Be For The World At Large?

I Believe The Government Has The Right To Recover From The Heirs To The Fortunes Of Its Most Successful Citizens Some Portion Of Those Fortunes.

If You Rely Too Much On The People In Other Countries And Other Companies, In A Sense That's Your Brain And You Are Outsourcing Your Brain.

(on Being The World's Richest Man) I Wish I Wasn't ... There's Nothing Good That Comes Out Of That. You Get More Visibility As A Result Of It.

We [us] Are The Biggest Per Person, By A Substantial Amount, Greenhouse Emitters, And We Give The Most Foreign Aid, Not Per Person But In Absolute. This Is Another Issue Where Hopefully We Will Take A Long-term Approach Which, Even Though We Sometimes Have A Hard Time Doing That, It's Easier For Us, As A Rich Country With This Kind Of Scientific Depth, Than It Is For The Poor Countries Who Will Suffer The Problems.

We Have Over 60 Million Machines That Can Take The Same Diskette, Plug It In And Immediately Ah, That That Software's Working. And So It's Created The Worldwide Software Industry That... That Is So Very Competitive And Moving So Quickly.

My Guideline Has Always Been To Avoid A Focus On Me Personally. Not Because Of Any Deep, Dark Secrets. Rather Just A Sense Of Privacy.

This Is Not About Trade, No One Is A Stronger Supporter Of Capitalism And Trade Than I Am. This Is About Sovereignty And Whether A Country Has The Right To Set Its Own Public Health Policies.

Well, I Don't Think There's Any Need For People To Focus On My Career.

When You Say That After World War I There Was A Pandemic That Killed More People Than The War Itself, Most Will Say: "wait, Are You Kidding? I Know World War I, But There Was No World War 1.5, Was There?" But People Were Traveling Around After The War, And That Meant The Force Of Infection Was Much Higher. And The Problem Is That The Rate Of Travel Back Then Was Dramatically Less Than What We Have Nowadays.

I Try To Make Time For Reading Each Night. In Addition To The Usual Newspapers And Magazines, I Make It A Priority To Read At Least One Newsweekly From Cover To Cover. If I Were To Read What Intrigues Me- Say, The Science And Business Sections - Then I Would Finish The Magazine The Same Person I Was When I Started. So I Read It All.

Let's Face It, The Average Computer User Has The Brain Of A Spider Monkey.

I Have A Company That Is Not Microsoft, Called Corbis. Corbis Is The Operation That Merged With Bettman Archives. It Has Nothing To Do With Microsoft. It Was Intentionally Done Outside Of Microsoft Because Microsoft Isn't Interested.

The U.s. Couldn't Even Get Rid Of Saddam Hussein. And We All Know That The Eu Is Just A Passing Fad. They'll Be Killing Each Other Again In Less Than A Year. I'm Sick To Death Of All These Fascist Lawsuits.

Killing Each Other

At The End Of The Day, Natural-gas Peakers Sit Back There And Get Financed So That The Midwest Corridor Can Have A Huge [period] Of Four To Five Days Of No Wind. The Peakers Are Running Big Time To Make That Up, Because That Is The Swing Piece That Can Always Be Turned On.

You Have To Have A Certain Realism That Government Is A Pretty Blunt Instrument And Without The Constant Attention Of Highly Qualified People With The Right Metrics, It Will Fall Into Not Doing Things Very Well.

Aids We're - Most Of These Diseases - We Are Down From The Peak. We're Down About 40 Per Cent From The Peak And If We Got The Right Vaccines, Which Are At The Early Stage Of Discovering, Then The Numbers Would Come Down Very Dramatically. So That's Why We Talk About It As An Emergency.

The Phenomenal Generosity Of The United States In Its Aid Budget Towards Health Issues Is The Best In The World. You Can Look At That Broadly, You Can Look At It In Terms Of Hiv, The Pepfar Money Which Came Together In A Republican Administration With Bipartisan Support.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Reading.

The Media Covers What’s New – And Millions Of People Dying Is Nothing New. So It Stays In The Background, Where It’s Easier To Ignore. But Even When We Do See It Or Read About It, It’s Difficult To Keep Our Eyes On The Problem. It’s Hard To Look At Suffering If The Situation Is So Complex That We Don’t Know How To Help. And So We Look Away.

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