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Hopefully, Whether It's Energy Or Child Vaccines, The Case Of The Many Benefits Helping Countries So That They Are Stable, So These Refugee Problems That Have Been Troubling For Europe - A Little Less So For The U.s. But, Even So, A Lot Of Controversy There - These Things Are Why The Future's Going To Be Better Than The Past. People Really Do Look To The United States, So We'll Be There Making The Case.

-Bill Gates

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Hopefully, Whether It's Energy

Bill Gates

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Hopefully, Whether It's Energy Or Child Vaccines, The Case Of The Many Benefits Helping Countries So That They Are Stable, So These Refugee Problems That Have Been Troubling For Europe - A Little Less So For The U.s. But, Even So, A Lot Of Controversy There - These Things Are Why The Future's Going To Be Better Than The Past. People Really Do Look To The United States, So We'll Be There Making The Case.

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Like Many Others, I Have Deep Misgivings About The State Of Education In The United States. Too Many Of Our Students Fail To Graduate From High School With The Basic Skills They Will Need To Succeed In The 21st Century Economy, Much Less Prepared For The Rigors Of College And Career. Although Our Top Universities Continue To Rank Among The Best In The World, Too Few American Students Are Pursuing Degrees In Science And Technology. Compounding This Problem Is Our Failure To Provide Sufficient Training For Those Already In The Workforce.

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

If You Count E-mail, I'm On The Internet All Day, Every Day.

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.

The First Rule Of Any Technology Used In A Business Is That Automation Applied To An Efficient Operation Will Magnify The Efficiency. The Second Is That Automation Applied To An Inefficient Operation Will Magnify The Inefficiency.

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.

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

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.

By Improving Health, Empowering Women, Population Growth Comes Down.

Security Is, I Would Say, Our Top Priority Because For All The Exciting Things You Will Be Able To Do With Computers - Organizing Your Lives, Staying In Touch With People, Being Creative - If We Don't Solve These Security Problems, Then People Will Hold Back.

I Can Understand Wanting To Have Millions Of Dollars; There's A Certain Freedom, Meaningful Freedom, That Comes With That.

When You Have Money In Hand,only You Forget Who Are You .but When You Do Not Have Any Money In Your Hand,the Whole World Forget Who You Are.it's Life.

Today, You Always Know Whether You Are On The Internet Or On Your Pc's Hard Drive. Tomorrow, You Will Not Care And May Not Even Know.

Treatment Without Prevention Is Simply Unsustainable.

People Don't Want Lots And Lots Of Single Purpose Devices. They Do Not Want To Have To Learn How To Set Up Something For Photos, Another Thing For Music, Another Thing For Video.

Microsoft Is A Company That Manages Imagination.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Reading.

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.

People Cannot Become Truly Knowledgeable Without Being Excellent Readers.

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.

Ok, I Have A Nickname. My Family Calls Me 'trey' Because I'm William The Third. My Dad Has The Same Name, Which Is Always Confusing Because My Dad Is Well Known, And I'm Also Known.

As We Look Ahead Into The Next Century, Leaders Will Be Those Who Empower Others.

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.

Lectures Should Go From Being Like The Family Singing Around The Piano To High-quality Concerts.

If The 1980s Were About Quality And The 1990s Were About Reengineering, Then The 2000s Will Be About Velocity.

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.

Exposure To The Reproductions [of Corbis-owned Fine Art Photographs] Is Likely To Increase Rather Than Diminish Reverence For The Real Art And Encourage More People To Get Out To Museums And Galleries.

My Experience Of Malaria Was Just Taking Anti-malarials, Which Give You Strange Dreams, Because I Don't Want To Get Malaria.

The Obvious Mathematical Breakthrough Would Be Development Of An Easy Way To Factor Large Prime Numbers.

How You Gather, Manage, And Use Information Will Determine Whether You Win Or Lose.

I Am Not Topper In My University But All Toppers Are Working In My Microsoft Company.

The World Has Been Very Careful To Pick Very Few Diseases For Eradication, Because It Is Very Tough.

I Have $100 Billion... You Realize I Could Spend $3 Million A Day, Every Day, For The Next 100 Years? And That's If I Don't Make Another Dime.

About Three Million Computers Get Sold Every Year In China, People Don't Pay For The Software. Someday They Will, Though. And As Long As They're Going To Steal It, We Want Them To Steal Ours. They'll Get Sort Of Addicted, And Then We'll Somehow Figure Out How To Collect Sometime In The Next Decade.

The Quality Of Research In The U.s. Is Absolutely The Best.

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

What I Do Best Is Share My Enthusiasm.

I Am Surprised That In Various Countries, Whether It's The U.k. Or The U.s., You See Isolationist Tendencies That Would Tend To Work Against The Co-operation, Whether It's Climate Change, Immigration, Innovation, Helping The Very Poorest. Those Are Things Where You Want To Think Across Country Boundaries And See A Win-win-type Solution.

Life's Not Fair, Get Over It!

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.

R&d Generally Has Been A Bipartisan Thing, Because In The It Space, In The Medical Space, The U.s., The Benefits To Ourselves And The World And Our Economy Have Been Very, Very Clear. I'm Hopeful We Can Make A Very Strong Case There. Energy Is Actually Harder; It Takes More Time To Get A Product, But If You Do It's A Very, Very Big Market And The Constraints Of Doing That In A Clean Way Are More Obvious All The Time.

The Vision Is Really About Empowering Workers, Giving Them All The

People Care A Lot That The Usa Is Well Run, And People Globally Expect Us To Do Things In Upgrading Science And More.

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.

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.

Finally, Assuming That Many Of Those Are Fulfilled, Which Won't Be Easy In Tight Budget Times, We're Taking The Supply Side At The Basic Research Level, Because That's Where Government Is Absolutely Fundamental.

Software Was Changing So Fast, So Unbelievable, That That Got Very Quick Adoption.

Thanks To Quality Education, Israel Is One Of The Most Advanced Countries In The World .. Israel Is Advancing In High-tech Even More Than Other Developed Countries.

The Impact Of Improving Health Is That The Population Growth Goes Down, And So You Can Educate More Kids, Feed More Kids.

While We're All Very Dependent On Technology, It Doesn't Always Work.

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.

Creativity Allows People To Be Effective.

If I Had One Dollar Left, I'd Spend It On Pr

Our Modern Lifestyle Is Not A Political Creation. Before 1700, Everybody Was Poor As Hell. Life Was Short And Brutish. It Wasn't Because We Didn't Have Good Politicians; We Had Some Really Good Politicians. But Then We Started Inventing - Electricity, Steam Engines, Microprocessors, Understanding Genetics And Medicine And Things Like That. Yes, Stability And Education Are Important - I'm Not Taking Anything Away From That - But Innovation Is The Real Driver Of Progress.

I Feel Pretty Stupid That I Don't Know Any Foreign Languages. I Wish I Knew French Or Arabic Or Chinese.

I Think Of Myself As A Global Citizen.

Polio's Pretty Special Because Once You Get An Eradication, You No Longer Have To Spend Money On It; It's Just There As A Gift For The Rest Of Time.

My Grade Point Average Went From A 2.2 To A 4.0 Over The Summer. I Wanted To Get Straight A's. I Decided To Get Straight A's. I Didn't Want People To Think I Was Dumb. And When You Get Straight A's Once, Its Easier.

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

We're Only At The Beginning Of What We Have To Do Here.

Software Is A Great Combination Between Artistry And Engineering. When You Finally Get Done And Get To Appreciate What You Have Done It Is Like A Part Of Yourself That You've Put Together. I Think A Lot Of The People Here Feel That Way.

Headlines, In A Way, Are What Mislead You Because Bad News Is A Headline, And Gradual Improvement Is Not.

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.

Microsoft Has Had Many, Many Successful Products. I'm Committed To One Company. This Is The Industry I've Decided To Work In.

Microsoft Does Not Dominate The Software Industry By Any Stretch Of The Imagination. We Have Lots Of Very Able Competitors Who Keep Us Constantly Vigilant, And Sometimes They Beat Us To The Punch. Microsoft's Success To Date Is Based Solely On The Fact That People Like Microsoft Software.

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.

I Have Been Struck Again And Again By How Important Measurement Is To Improving The Human Condition.

With Tech Companies, Whoever's The Leader Is Always Questioned, You Know. They Say, 'is This The End Of Them?' And - There's More - More Times People Think That's The Case Than It Really Is The Case.

I Believe In Generous Aid Policies.

The Poor Can't Wait. Philanthropists Needed To Carry On Being Generous.

The Concept Of This So-called "terrapower Reactor" Is That You, In The Same Reactor, You Both Burn And Breed. So, Instead Of Making Plutonium And Then Extracting It, We Take Uranium - The 99.3 Percent That You Normally Don't Do Anything With - We Convert That, And We Burn It.

The Microprocessor Is A Miracle.

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

I Have This Very Positive View Of The World Getting Better And Better. The List Of Things That Could Be Huge Setbacks Is Not Very Long: A Nuclear War, Climate Change And Epidemics.

The Outpouring Of Support From Millions Of People In The Immediate Aftermath Of The Earthquake In Haiti Has Been Impressive.

There Certainly Is A Case To Be Made That Taxes Should Be More Progressive.

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.

The U.s. And Canada Are Two Generous Governments And We Reach Out And Partner With Anyone Who Believes In Foreign Aid.

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.

Learn From Your Unhappy Customers.

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.

I Have To Admit That Business-type Thoughts Do Sneak Into My Head: I Hope Our Customers Pay Us, I Hope This Stuff Is Decent, I Hope We Get It Done On Time. The Little Additions And Subtractions That One Has To Do. Take Sales, Take Costs And Try To Get That Big Positive Number At The Bottom.

When I Was Growing Up, My Parents Were Almost Involved In Various Volunteer Things. My Dad Was Head Of Planned Parenthood. And It Was Very Controversial To Be Involved With That.

If You Can't Make It Good, At Least Make It Look Good.

Software Is Inherently Complicated. If You Say To Somebody I Want An Airline Reservation System, To Really Say What You Want In Terms Of Overbooking And Fares, And Different Airlines Communicating With Each Or Schedule Changes, It's Immensely Complex. And So You Can't Write A Program That's Any Simpler Than That Full Specification.

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

Who In Their Right Mind Would Ever Need More Than 640k Of Ram!?

Well Depending On The Government, You Either Work Through The Government, Which Is Ideal, Because Then You're Strengthening Their Capabilities, Or You Work Through The Non-governmental Organizations. It's Never Easy, And You Know, It's Just About The Very Basics Of Health. This Is Not Hospitals. This Is Just Primary Health Care [in Africa], The Most Simple Things, And Even So, Getting The Supplies Out, Getting The Trained Workers There.

For All These Infectious Diseases, The Goal Is To Eventually Get Rid Of Them. And To Do That We Need To Invent New Tools, But Nobody Was Doing That Because There Was No Money To Buy On Behalf Of The Poorest, Even The Existing Tools.

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

The Moral Systems Of Religion, I Think, Are Super Important.

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

Here Are Economies Like China's Economy Where It's Less Than A Tenth [of A Percent] Today, Although It Is Growing, Is Quite Small, Because Of The Notion That The Government Takes Care Of Everything, And Europe And China, Philanthropy Has Not Been Nearly Of The Same Scale.

Training The Workforce Of Tomorrow With Today's High Schools Is Like Trying To Teach Kids About Today's Computers On A 50-year-old Mainframe.

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.

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.

There Are Several Hundred People Who Stayed In The Ebola-affected Countries And Continued To Do The Work, Put Themselves At Great Risk Because Medical Workers Are The Most Likely To Be Infected Because They're Helping Out When The Person's Health Is Deteriorating, Including Quite A Bit Of Bleeding As They're Getting Very, Very Sick.

Www? Nice Toy, But What A Waste Of Time.

Whenever There Is Hard Work To Be Done, I Assign It To The Laziest Man As He Is Sure To Find An Easy Way Of Doing It. Be Lazy, Think Crazy.

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.

The Flatter The Corporate Hierarchy, The More Likely It Is That Employees Will Communicate Bad News And Act Upon It.

You Can Go Overboard In How Quickly You Might Expect New Technologies To Transform People's Lives. But I Very Much Believe The Way Software Is Used, The Way Information Gets Distributed, Will Be Dramatically Different Within 10 Years. There Is Fire To Go With All This Smoke.

If You Withdraw The Incredible Focus On Polio, It Will Spread Back, And In Poor Countries You'll Get Something Like 100,000 Cases A Year. So By Being Very Intense And Getting The Cases Down To Zero, What You Do Is You Avoid All The Future Cases.

The Interview Process Tests Not What The Applicant Knows, But How Well They Can Process Tricky Questions: If You Wanted To Figure Out How Many Times On Average You Would Have To Flip The Pages Of The Manhattan Phone Book To Find A Specific Name, How Would You Approach The Problem? If A Spider Fell To The Bottom Of A 50-foot Well, And Each Day Climbed Up 3 Feet And Slipped Back 2, How Many Days Would It Take The Spider To Get Out Of The Well? .

We Flew Down Weekly To Meet With Ibm, But They Thought The Way To Measure Software Was The Amount Of Code We Wrote, When Really The Better The Software, The Fewer Lines Of Code.

Computer Science … Jobs Should Be Way More Interesting Than Even Going To Wall Street Or Being A Lawyer--or, I Can Argue, Than Anything But Perhaps Biology, And There It's Just A Tie.

Drones Overall Will Be More Impactful Than I Think People Recognize In Positive Ways To Help Society.

On The Supply Side, For Innovation, You'd Say, Go Look At Those R&d Budgets, And They Haven't Moved In The Last 20 Years. In The Case Of The Us - Which Is The Majority Of R&d Funding Across Every Category You Can Name: Health, Energy, Whatever - It's Been About $5 Billion A Year From The Department Of Energy.

In Business, The Idea Of Measuring What You Are Doing, Picking The Measurements That Count Like Customer Satisfaction And Performance... You Thrive On That.

Know Your Numbers' Is A Fundamental Precept Of Business.

Dos Is Ugly And Interferes With Users' Experience.

User Experience

The Finest Pieces Of Software Are Those Where One Individual Has A Complete Sense Of Exactly How The Program Works. To Have That, You Have To Really Love The Program And Concentrate On Keeping It Simple, To An Incredible Degree.

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

Human Condition

We Win Because We Hire The Smartest People. We Improve Our Products Based On Feedback, Until They're The Best. We Have Retreats Each Year Where We Think About Where The World Is Heading.

If You Say To People That There's Less Violence Today Than In The Past, They Would Be Stunned To Hear That. But It's The Truth, Even Though We Have Awful Things Happening In Syria Or Sudan.

If Success Corrupts, I'm Probably Pretty Corrupted By Now.

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.

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

I've Been Studying How Quickly We Can Get Energy Out To The Poor Countries - A Lot Of Which Are In Africa - And How Little Progress We've Made There. There's No More Electricity Today In Sub-saharan Africa Per Person Than There Was 20 Years Ago.

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.

Bitcoin Is A Technological Tour De Force

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

There Is No Doubt That As An Economy Grows In A Great Way Like India Has, That You Have To Step Back And Change Your Tax Systems, Because You Start To Get More Disparities Of Wealth.

Any Version Of Windows Is Going To Have Lots Of Great New Things That People Use And Things That Are Tough.

The Internet Will Help Achieve "friction Free Capitalism" By Putting Buyer And Seller In Direct Contact And Providing More Information To Both About Each Other.

You Know, I'm A Big Believer In Touch And Digital Reading, But I Still Think That Some Mixture Of Voice, The Pen And A Real Keyboard - In Other Words A Netbook - Will Be The Mainstream On That.

The Typical Project Design Time For A Large Company Like Ibm - And They Keep Track Of This - Is A Little Over Four Years.

In A System Of Capitalism, As People's Wealth Rises, The Financial Incentive To Serve Them Rises. As Their Wealth Falls, The Financial Incentive To Serve Them Falls, Until It Becomes Zero. We Have To Find A Way To Make The Aspects Of Capitalism That Serve Wealthier People Serve Poorer People As Well.

We Had Planned To Integrate A Web Browser With Our Operating System As Far Back As 1993( Filing Its First Court Responses To Federal Antitrust)

I Meet People Overseas That Know Five Languages - That The Only Language I'm Comfortable In Is English.

The Us Really Has To Get Out In Front. We Are The Biggest Per Person, By A Substantial Amount, Greenhouse Emitters, And We Give The Most Foreign Aid, Not Per Person But In Absolute.

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.

Technology Must Be Implemented As Part Of A Thoughtful, Holistic Approach To Education Transformation That Includes Teacher Training, Relevant Curricula, Parental Involvement, And Programs For Children That Fill Unmet Needs For Basics Like Nutrition And Health Care.

I Keep Bumping Into That Silly Quotation Attributed To Me That Says 640k Of Memory Is Enough. There's Never A Citation; The Quotation Just Floats Like A Rumor, Repeated Again And Again.

I Reboot [my Windows Pc] Every Night.

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.

Even When I Wrote Basic Myself The Day Before I Burned It Into A Computer I Wasn't Making Design Changes. I Didn't Have A Testing Team. I Did All The Testing Myself. And There Was No Project Methodology Or Schedule That, There Was The Notion Of Coming To A Close Means Testing A Lot At The End And Making Very Few Changes.

Anything That Someone's Interested In Should Be Very, Very Easy To Call Up Onto The Screen. And In Fact The Computer Over Time Will See What You're Interested In And Make That Immediately Available Without Your Having To Be Give Any Commands At All.

The Government Is Somewhat Inept, But The Private Sector Is Inept In General. How Many Companies Do Venture Capitalists Invest In That Go Poorly? By Far Most Of Them. However, Every Once In A While A Google Or A Microsoft Comes Out, So People Keep Giving Them Money.

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.

The First Big Effects Will Be Farmers That Live On The Edge. Today's Weather, They Barely Get By. Their Kids, A High Percentage Are Malnourished, And So If You Impose More Variable Weather And More Heat, You're Getting More Floods, More Droughts, And During The Germination Time, The High Heat, Most Crops...do Poorly When There's More Heat.

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.

The People Who Resist Change Will Be Confronted By The Growing Number Of People Who See That Better Ways Are Available; Thanks To Technology.

Like A Human Being, A Company Has To Have An Internal Communication Mechanism, A "nervous System", To Coordinate Its Actions.

We're In A Period Of Uncertainty About [donald Trump] Administration Policies And The Range Of What Might Happen Is Particularly Higher. I Don't Think That These R&d And Innovation Budgets Will Be Substantially Reduced.

If Your Goal Is To Make The World A Better Place, One Thing You Can Do Is Pick A Specific Challenge That You Really Care About. Then, Learn As Much As You Can About It And Try To Volunteer Your Time To Help An Organization That Is Working In This Area. While You're Doing That, Look For Creative New Ways To Use Technology To Tackle Parts Of The Problem That You Come In Contact With.

I'm An Investor In A Number Of Biotech Companies, Partly Because Of My Incredible Enthusiasm For The Great Innovations They Will Bring.

The Death Of A Child Is An Incredible Tragedy All Over The World. Back In 1990, About 12 Percent Of Children Were Dying Before They Reached The Age Of 5.

If I Only Had Two Dollars Left I Would Spend One Dollar On Pr.

Five Years From Now On The Web For Free You’ll Be Able To Find The Best Lectures In The World. It Will Be Better Than Any Single University.

I'm Quite Worried About The Fiscal Imbalances That We've Got And What That Might Mean In Terms Of Financial Crisis Ahead.

Television Is Not Real Life. In Real Life People Actually Have To Leave The Coffee Shop And Go To Jobs.

I Hope Corporations Will Dedicate A Percentage Of Their Top Innovators' Time To Issues That Could Help People Left Out Of The Global Economy. This Kind Of Contribution Is Even More Powerful Than Giving Cash Or Offering Employees' Time Off To Volunteer. It Is A Focused Use Of What Your Company Does Best. It Is A Great Form Of Creative Capitalism, Because It Takes The Brainpower And Makes Life Better For The Richest, And Dedicates Some Of It To Improving The Lives Of Everyone Else.

Kenya’s M-pesa Proves That When People Are Empowered, They Will Use Digital Tech To Innovate On Their Own Behalf.

Dna Is Like A Computer Program But Far, Far More Advanced Than Any Software Ever Created.

When I Was Trying To Figure Out Why Lives Have Improved So Much In The Last 300 Years, Where We've Gone From A Third Of Kids Dying Before 5 To - By 1990 It Was Down To 10% - Now It's Down To 5%. And Saying Why, Over All History, There Were Smart People, But That Number Didn't Change. Average Life Span Didn't Change. What's Magical About What's Been Deemed The Industrial Revolution? It's Really Energy Intensity.

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.

A Company's Ability To Respond To An Unplanned Event, Good Or Bad Is A Prime Indicator Of Its Ability To Compete.

Whenever You Have Multiple Devices Including Multiple Pcs That You Want To Share Information With, It's Always Been A Bit Complicated.

I Am Results-oriented.

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

Even In Some Of Our Vaccine Areas, Like An Aids Vaccine, Things Have Taken Longer Than We Expected, But We Have The Pipeline Of Tools. The Biological Information That We Have That Gives Us Insights Is Fantastic.

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.

Going Out In The Field, It's Always Enlightening To See What's Working And What's Not And To Sit Down And Talk - I Was With Young Girls In South Africa - Understanding Why Our Tools For Prevention Aren't Being Adopted, And What Way May Need To Invent To Help Protect Them.

We Got A Malaria Initiative, Really A Phenomenal Time, Even Though In The Early Stages There Was Some Uncertainty. Then Of Course [barack] Obama, Although He Had Budget Constraints, He Believed In These Things; A Lot Of New Initiatives, Including In Agriculture.

I Don't Believe In Creating Dynastic Wealth. I Don't Really Believe That In A Society That Aspires To Be Meritocratic And That Believes In Equality Of Opportunity - My Kids Have Had Advantage Over 99 Percent Of The Kids In The Country.

I'm Cooler Than You. Waaay Cooler.

Imagine, Just For The Sake Of Discussion, That You Had A Few Hours A Week And A Few Dollars A Month To Donate To A Cause - And You Wanted To Spend That Time And Money Where It Would Have The Greatest Impact In Saving And Improving Lives. Where Would You Spend It?

I'm Not Somebody Who Goes To Church On A Regular Basis. The Specific Elements Of Christianity Are Not Something I'm A Huge Believer In.

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.

The End Of The Day

I Believe Technology Will Continue To Become More Affordable And More People Will Have The Chance To Use It. This Will Help More People Get Medical Care And A Good Education.

I Was A Kind Of Hyper-intense Person In My Twenties And Very Impatient.

We Make The Future Sustainable When We Invest In The Poor, Not When We Insist On Their Suffering.

We Get Comfort From Those Who Agree With Us, But We Get Growth From Only Those Who Don't Agree With Us !

You Can't Have A Rigid View That All New Taxes Are Evil.

Most People Overestimate What They Can Do In One Year And Underestimate What They Can Do In Ten Years.

Corruption Is One Of The Most Common Reasons I Hear In Views That Criticize Aid.

I Didn't Even Complete My University Education

University Education

The Computer Will Live Your Life, Listen To You And Understand You Better Than Humans Can.

The Intersection Of Law, Politics, And Technology Is Going To Force A Lot Of Good Thinking.

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.

If Africa Seeks Prosperity, It Must Provide For The Health And Nutrition Of All – Including The Poorest.

The Government's Ability To Select Scientists And Pick Things That Are Fairly Strange, Because Politicians Don't Like Failures. They're Only In Office A Short Term, And Many Of These Things Take A Long Time.

I Want To Admit That I Am An Optimist. Any Tough Problem, I Think It Can Be Solved.

My Dream Is That Every Child Has Enough Food To Eat, Good Medical Care, And The Chance To Go To School And Even Attend College.

Government Investment Unlocks A Huge Amount Of Private Sector Activity, But The Basic Research That We Put Into It Work That Led To The Internet And Lots Of Great Companies And Jobs, The Basic Work We Put Into The Health Care Sector, Where It's Over $30 Billion A Year In R&d That Led The Biotech And Pharma Jobs. And It Creates Jobs And It Creates New Technologies That Will Be Productized. But The Government Has To Prime The Pump Here. The Basic Ideas, As In Those Other Industries, Start With Government Investment.

If You're Smart, You Often Want A Feedback Loop So You Know If What You've Done Is... Is Right.

Students Deserve Great Teachers. And Teachers Deserve The Support They Need To Become Great.

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.

When You Have A Fortune That Is Almost Hard To Imagine, The Best Thing Is Not To Pass That On To One's Children. That Distorts Their Life Situation.

The Global Fund Is A Central Player In The Progress Being Achieved On Hiv, Tb And Malaria. It Channels Resources To Help Countries Fight These Diseases. I Believe In Its Impact Because I Have Seen It Firsthand.

Driving Up The Value Of The Advertising Is A Big Commitment For Microsoft.

Effective Philanthropy Requires A Lot Of Time And Creativity - The Same Kind Of Focus And Skills That Building A Business Requires.

We Really Have To Work Hard To Remind People Even Though This Is Far Away, That's It's Probably The Most Generous Thing Governments Have Ever Come Together To Do. Since World War Ii, This New Institution Is The Only One That's Emerged And Is Saving All These Lives.

Other Paths Would Include Making Nuclear Fission Cheap Enough And Safe Enough That People Broadly Embrace It, So That Could Be Scaled Up.

Scientists And Companies Weren't Creating Things Like New Vaccines. Now That We Have This Fund That's There To Buy At The Lowest Price, But Buy For Those People These Medicines, We See Scientists Everywhere Coming Up With Those New Tools.

Creating Things

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.

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 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.

Microsoft Has Some Assets Like Office That Have Stayed Strong And There's So Much Room For Innovation In Those.

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