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I Don't Think Culture Is Something You Can Describe.
-Bill Gates
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I Don't Think Culture

Bill Gates
...
I Don't Think Culture Is Something You Can Describe.

Understanding the Quote: "i don't think culture is something you can describe...."

This quote by Bill Gates reflects deeply on the theme of thinking. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Thinking, Culture, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Bill Gates interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Bill Gates

Bill Gates is celebrated for insightful thoughts on thinking and culture. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Thinking
Culture
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Success
Business
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Embrace Bad News To Learn Where You Need The Most Improvement.
Motivational
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Three
Green
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Education
School
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Would Be
Natural
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Administration
It's Paradoxical That, When You Have Better Health, Families Choose To Have Less Children, Because They've Been Having Enough Children So That They Can Be Sure That A Few Of Them Will Survive And Take Care Of Them. So As Health Improves, Then All The Other Problems Are Dramatically Easier To Tackle.
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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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Media
We're At The Point Now Where The Challenge Isn't How To Communicate Effectively With E-mail; It's Ensuring That You Spend Your Time On The E-mail That Matters Most.
Inspirational
Business
Communication
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.
Country
Believe
Fighting
The Dreams Of The Past - Whether It Was Public Tv Being Rolled Into The Classroom To Teach Spanish, Or The Film Projectors Or The Videotapes Or The Computer-aided Instruction Drill Systems - The Hopes Have Been Dashed In Terms Of Technology Having Some Big Impact. The Foundation, I Think Can Play A Unique Role There. Now, Our Money Is More To The Teacher-effectiveness Thing, And Technology Is No. 2, But I'll Probably Spend More Money On The Technology Things.
Dream
Teacher
Unique
People Cannot Become Truly Knowledgeable Without Being Excellent Readers.
People
Excellent
Knowledgeable
Unemployment Rates Among Americans Who Never Went To College Are About Double That Of Those Who Have A Postsecondary Education.
College
Unemployment
Rate
The Us Spends More On Energy R&d Than All Other Countries Put Together, And I Personally Consider It Quite Inadequate. In Fact, I Would Have Said We Should More Than Double It, If I Thought The Absorptive Capacity Could Scale Up And If It Was Actually Possible To Get To That Level.
Country
Together
Energy
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.
Crazy
Hard Work
Men
The Next Big Invention That Will Change The Way We Live Should Be Things Like Ways Of Generating Energy Like Electricity.
Energy
Way
Next
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.
Math
Years
Class
Being Able To See An Activity Log Of Where A Kid Has Been Going On The Internet Is A Good Thing.
Kids
Able
Internet
It’s Useful To Compare Our Preparations For Epidemics With Our Preparations For War.
War
Epidemics
Preparation
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.
Country
Growing Up
Talking
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.
Son
Interesting
Stuff
I'm Quite Worried About The Fiscal Imbalances That We've Got And What That Might Mean In Terms Of Financial Crisis Ahead.
Inspirational
Business
Mean
Our Current Expectations For What Our Students Should Learn In School Were Set fifty Years Ago To Meet The Needs Of An Economy Based On Manufacturing And Agriculture. We Now Have An Economy Based On Knowledge And Technology.
School
Technology
Years
Money Has Always Been In Politics. And I'm Not Sure You'd Want Money To Be Completely Out Of Politics.
Want
Not Sure
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.
Lame
Information
Matter
The World Today Has 6.8 Billion People...that's Headed Up To About 9 Billion. If We Do A Really Great Job On Vaccines, Health Care, Reproductive Health Services, We Could Lower That By Perhaps 10 To 15 Percent.
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Vaccines
People
The Most Impactful Dollars That Australia Can Spend Are Actually What Goes To Help The Poorest.
Australia
Dollars
Helping
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Progressive
Made
Should
Success Today Requires The Agility And Drive To Constantly Rethink, Reinvigorate, React, And Reinvent.
Agility
Today
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Magic
World
Problem
I Remember In 1980 Or 1981 Looking At A List Of People Who Had Made A Lot Of Money In The Computer Industry And Thinking, Wow, That's Amazing. But I Never Thought I'd Be On That List. It's Clear I Was Wrong. I'm On The List, At Least Temporarily.
Thinking
People
Wow
Microsoft Is A Company That Manages Imagination.
Imagination
Team Building
Teammate
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.
Country
Winning
Thinking
50 Years From Now We Won't Need As Much Human Labour To Do What Manual Workers Do, So We Should Be Able To Take That Extra Productivity And Put It To Better Use.
Years
Able
Needs
There's A Unique Thing About The Uk, Where You Give A Very Generous Foreign Aid Budget To Support Globally, Which Is Spent Wisely. We Partner With The Government Here To Make Sure That That Money Is Spent Well.
Unique
Government
Giving
We Paired This Announcement Of The R&d [commitment] With The So-called Breakthrough Energy Coalition, Which Is 27 [major Investors] Saying, "hey, We'll Put Significant Money Into [energy Innovations] When They're Ready To Spin Out Probably Into Startup Companies."
Commitment
Innovation
Energy
Most People Overestimate What They Can Do In One Year And Underestimate What They Can Do In Ten Years.
Inspirational
Life
Years
We All Sort Of Do Want Incentives For Creative People To Still Exist At A Certain Level. You Know, Maybe Rock Stars Shouldn't Make As Much; Who Knows? But You Want As Much Creativity To Take Place In The Future As Took Place In The Past.
Stars
Creativity
Past
You Need To Understand Things In Order To Invent Beyond Them.
Order
Needs
The Thing About Hd-dvd That Is Attractive To Microsoft Is That It's Very Pro-consumer In Letting You Copy All Movies Up Onto The Hard Disk.
Dvds
Microsoft
Attractive
Automation Applied To An Inefficient Operation Will Magnify The Inefficiency.
Technology
Automation
Efficiency
If You Think Of Global Public Goods Like Polio Eradication, The Kind Of Risk-taking New Approach, Philanthropy Really Does Have A Role To Play There, Because Government Doesn't Do R&d About New Things Naturally As Much As It Probably Should, And So Philanthropy's There.
Thinking
Government
Play
Innovation Is A Good Thing. The Human Condition - Put Aside Bioterrorism And A Few Footnotes - Is Improving Because Of Innovation.
Innovation
Good Things
Human Condition
While We're All Very Dependent On Technology, It Doesn't Always Work.
Technology
Dependent
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.
Soccer
Kids
Talking
I Believe In Generous Aid Policies.
Believe
Aids
Policy
For One Thing, There's An Essential Human Factor In Every Business Endeavor. It Doesn't Matter If You Have A Perfect Product, Production Plan And Marketing Pitch; You'll Still Need The Right People To Lead And Implement Those Plans.
People
Perfect
Marketing
The Poor Can't Wait. Philanthropists Needed To Carry On Being Generous.
Waiting
Poor
Philanthropist
Thinking About Impact On Children Meant Adding To The Agenda, Both The R&d Agenda And The Delivery Agenda, But It's Amazing News, Even In The Scale Of Other Tragedies.
Children
Thinking
Impact
Bridge Is The King Of All Card Games.
Kings
Games
Bridges
Melinda [gates] Has Been My Partner In Raising The Kids And I Went From Before I Met Her, Intentionally Having An Unbalanced Life, To Having A More Balanced Life With All Sorts Of Fun Things That She And I Do Together.
Fun
Kids
Together
The More You Learn, The More You Have A Framework That The Knowledge Fits Into.
Fit
Framework
There Is Competition, .. Can Any Microsoft Endure Future Competition Without Innovation? The Answer Is No. We've Got To Keep Changing.
Competition
Innovation
Microsoft
I'm Not A Macroeconomics Person.
Macroeconomics
Persons
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.
Kids
Weather
Variables
Take Our 20 Best People Away, And I Will Tell You That Microsoft Will Become An Unimportant Company
People
Microsoft
Company
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.
Important
Matter
Chance
Investing In Tomorrow's Technology Today Is More Critical Than Ever.
Technology
Investing
Today
The Most Straightforward Path Would Be If We Could Bring The Cost Of Solar Electric And Wind Down By Another Factor Of Say, Three, And Then Have Some Miraculous Storage Solution, So That Not Only Over The 24-hour Day But Over Long Periods Of Time Where The Wind Doesn't Blow, You Have Reliable Energy. That's A Path. But Energy Storage Is Hard. That's Not A Guaranteed Path.
Blow
Wind
Long
The Computer Will Live Your Life, Listen To You And Understand You Better Than Humans Can.
Live Your Life
Computer
Humans
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.
Running
Swings
Wind
Anything You Do, You Better Enjoy It For Its Value. Because People Are Going To Second-guess Everything You Do.
Success
People
Enjoy
In Business, The Idea Of Measuring What You Are Doing, Picking The Measurements That Count Like Customer Satisfaction And Performance... You Thrive On That.
Success
Ideas
Satisfaction
My Innovation Message, Specifically Including Energy, Happened To Be The Same Week That On Monday And Tuesday I Announced The Breakthrough Energy Venture Group. Then On That Tuesday Afternoon, In December, Was When I Sat Down With Him. I Explained The Us Has Great Science Here, This Is Where The Market For These Things Is Going To Be. It Connects To Less Pollution, It Connects To U.s. Jobs, It Connects To Security, Not Needing The Energy Coming From Far Away.
Monday
Jobs
Tuesday
People Are Using Windows Pcs More Than They Watch Tv Now.
People
Watches
Tvs
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.
Winning
Thinking
Years
Learning To Write Programs Stretches Your Mind, And Helps You Think Better, Creates A Way Of Thinking About Things That I Think Is Helpful In All Domains.
Writing
Thinking
Mind
The Most Meaningful Way To Differentiate Your Company From Your Competitors, The Best Way To Put Distance Between You And The Crowd Is To Do An Outstanding Job With Information. How You Gather, Manage And Use Information Will Determine Whether You Win Or Lose.
Meaningful
Jobs
Distance
The Term, Information At Your Fingertips, Is To Remind People What A Broad Role The Personal Computer Will Be Playing. It's Not A Computation Device, It's Not A Word Processing Or A Spreadsheet Device. It's A Window Onto The World Of Information.
People
Roles
World
I Didn't Completed My University Education
University
University Education
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.
School
Kids
Years
Be Nice To Nerds,,, One Day U Might Have To Work For One
Nice
Nerd
One Day
There's Always A Tricky Issue When You Get Into Stolen Material Or Pornography. The Laws For Online Publishing The Same As For Print-based Publishing, Where If You're Hosting Certain Types Of Things And Somebody Notifies You About That.
Issues
Law
Online
Creative Capitalism Takes This Interest In The Fortunes Of Others And Ties It To Our Interest In Our Own Fortunes In Ways That Help Advance Both. This Hybrid Engine Of Self-interest And Concern For Others Can Serve A Much Wider Circle Of People Than Can Be Reached By Self-interest Or Caring Alone.
Caring
Self
Circles
If Your Business Is Not On The Internet, Then Your Business Will Be Out Of Business.
Marketing
Internet
Network Marketing
The Aids Is A Disease That Is Hard To Talk About.
Aids Day
Disease
Hard
Intellectual Property Has The Shelf Life Of A Banana.
Money
Business
Intellectual
Digital Reading Will Completely Take Over. It's Lightweight And It's Fantastic For Sharing. Over Time It Will Take Over.
Reading
Digital
Fantastic
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.
Educational
People
Focus
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.
Thinking
Musician
Goes On
It Is A High Bar To Say That It's More Fun Than Working On Software Because The Work At Microsoft That Both Melinda [gates] And I Did Was Thrilling. We Were Making Breakthroughs And Empowering People.
Fun
People
Empowering
When You Lose A Customer, It Can Be Tempting To Tell Each Other, "that Customer's Not Very Sharp. They Just Made The Wrong Decision".
Decision
Made
Tempting
Another Trick In Software Is To Avoid Rewriting The Software By Using A Piece That's Already Been Written, So Called Component Approach Which The Latest Term For This In The Most Advanced Form Is What's Called Object Oriented Programming.
Pieces
Rewriting
Form
Oh, I Think There Are A Lot Of People Who Would Be Buying And Selling Online Today That Go Up There And They Get The Information, But Then When It Comes Time To Type In Their Credit Card They Think Twice Because They're Not Sure About How That Might Get Out And What That Might Mean For Them.
Mean
Thinking
People
The Information Society Should Serve All Of Its Citizens, Not Only The Technically Sophisticated And Economically Privileged.
Citizens
Information
Sophisticated
Bitcoin Is A Technological Tour De Force
Bitcoin
Force
Technological
We Work With Whoever Is Elected. Some Will Bring A More Generous, Open View Of The World Than Others.
Views
World
Generous
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.
Country
People
Sick
Trending Author
Dan Rather
Jerry Lee Lewis
Lionel Richie
Chris Hemsworth
Antonio Gaudi
Ismail Haniyeh
Category
Information