Background Image

...

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.

-Bill Gates

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I'm Not Big On

Bill Gates

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Bill Gates

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.

Microsoft Looks At New Ideas, They Don't Evaluate Whether The Idea Will Move The Industry Forward, They Ask, 'how Will It Help Us Sell More Copies Of Windows?

Success Is A Lousy Teacher. It Seduces Smart People Into Thinking They Can't Lose.

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

I Admire Leaders In Science, People Who Really Figure Things Out Like Richard Fineman Or People Who Work On Vaccines, Tons Of People Working On [the] Hiv Vaccine. There's Leaders In Business, People Like Warren Buffett, Who've Got A Certain Approach They Take That Are Pretty Amazing. There [are] Product Innovators Like Steve Jobs Was, Where He Gets Behind A Concept And Does A Fantastic Job.

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.

Success Is A Miserable Teacher. It Tempts Intelligent People To Believe They Cannot Lose. And It Is An Unreliable Guide To The Future.

I'm Going To Retain A Lot Of Microsoft's Stock.

That Way You Can Be Certain To Learn Something You Didn't Know Previously.

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

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.

The Best Way To Prepare [to Be A Programmer] Is To Write Programs, And To Study Great Programs That Other People Have Written. In My Case, I Went To The Garbage Cans At The Computer Science Center And I Fished Out Listings Of Their Operating Systems.

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.

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.

We Believe Unbelievable Progress Can Be Made, In Both Inventing New Vaccines And Making Sure They Get Out To All The Children Who Need Them.

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.

The Most Amazing Philanthropists Are People Who Are Actually Making A Significant Sacrifice.

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.

Information Technology And Business Are Becoming Inextricably Interwoven. I Don't Think Anybody Can Talk Meaningfully About One Without The Talking About The Other.

The Future Of Advertising Is The Internet.

Nobody Has A Guaranteed Position In Computer Technologies Business. We've Done Some Good Work, But All Of These Products Become Obsolete So Fast And The Structure Of The Business As It Broadens Out Is Going To Be So Different.

In Terms Of Fast Food And Deep Understanding Of The Culture Of Fast Food, I'm Your Man.

Deep Understanding

Unfortunately, In Rich-world Health, Innovation Is Both Your Friend And Your Enemy. Innovation Is Inventing Organ Replacement, Joint Replacement. We're Inventing Ways Of Doing New Things That Cost $300,000 And Take People In Their 70s And, On Average, Give Them An Extra, Say, Two Or Three Years Of Life. And Then You Have To Say, Given Finite Resources, Should We Fire Two Or Three Teachers To Do This Operation?

When You Revolutionize Education, You're Taking The Very Mechanism Of How People Be Smarter And Do New Things, And You're Priming The Pump For So Many Incredible Things.

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.

No One Will Need More Than 637kb Of Memory For A Personal Computer

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

But The Improvements Will Happen Faster And Last Longer If We Can Channel Market Forces, Including Innovation That's Tailored To The Needs Of The Poorest, To Complement What Governments And Nonprofits Do. We Need A System That Draws In Innovators And Businesses In A Far Better Way Than We Do Today.

In My View, Investing In Public Libraries Is An Investment In The Nation's Future.

I Love Building The Products, Seeing People Use The Products But You Know Along With Success Comes The Need For A Dialogue With The Government.

Intellectual Property Has The Shelf Life Of A Banana.

Great Organizations Demand A High Level Of Commitment By The People Involved.

I Considered Law And Math. My Dad Was A Lawyer. I Think Though I Would Have Ended Up In Physics If I Didn't End Up In Computer Science.

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.

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.

I Realized About 10 Years Ago That My Wealth Has To Go Back To Society. A Fortune, The Size Of Which Is Hard To Imagine, Is Best Not Passed On To One's Children. It's Not Constructive For Them.

Common Core Is A Big Win For Education.

It's A Nice Reader, But There's Nothing On The Ipad I Look At And Say, 'oh, I Wish Microsoft Had Done It.'

I Hope You Will Judge Yourselves Not On Your Professional Accomplishments Alone, But Also On How Well You Have Addressed The World's Deepest Inequities...on How Well You Treated People A World Away Who Have Nothing In Common With You But Your Humanity.

You Need To Understand Things In Order To Invent Beyond Them.

Even For The Very Best Programmers Ah, Sometimes You'll See Someone Else's Program Or Somebody Will Come Along And They'll Show You What Can Be Done In A Simpler Way.

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."

Bitcoin Is A Technological Tour De Force

The Green Revolution Focused On The Big Three - Maize, Rice And Wheat - And The Green Revolution Did Not Adapt The Big Three To African Conditions, Other Than South Africa, As Much As They Should Have.

People Who Say They Don't See The Acceleration Of Innovation Is A Wilful Blindness. We Are Innovation At A Wonderful Speed For The Basic Things We Think Everyone Should Get.

You're Never Going To Get The Amount Of Co2 Emitted To Go Down Unless You Deal With The One Magic Metric, Which Is Co2 Per Kilowatt-hour.

How Much Further Beyond Basic Research The Role Of The Government Should Be, You Could Have A Really Good Debate About It. Almost Nobody Would Say It's Zero. But That's Where At Least We Need The Private Sector To Play A Big Role.

If Empathy Channels Our Optimism, We Will See The Empathy And The Diseases And The Poor School. We Will Answer With Our Innovations And We Will Surprise The Pessimists.

When I Say "miracle" I Mean A Kind Of Thing Like A Computer On A Chip, Or The Internet, Or The Cellphone, That Are Really Quite Miraculous. Most People Would Not Have Predicted Them, And Their Effect Has Been Very, Very Dramatic.

People Who Feel The World Is Tilted Against Them Will Spawn The Kind Of Hatred That Is Very Dangerous For All Of Us. I Think It's A Healthy Sign That There Are Demonstrators In The Streets. They Are Raising The Question Of 'is The Rich World Giving Back Enough?'

We Need To Start Thinking About The Future Of Food If We Are Going To Feed 9 Billion People In A Way That Does Not Destroy Our Environment.

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

Being Able To See An Activity Log Of Where A Kid Has Been Going On The Internet Is A Good Thing.

We All Need People Who Will Give Us Feedback. That's How We Improve.

As You Improve Health In A Society, Population Growth Goes Down. You Know, I Thought It Was... Before I Learned About It, I Thought It Was Paradoxical.

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.

This [philanthropy] Work Is Even More Fascinating. It Requires Us To Think Harder About How We Build Partnerships, Who We Get Behind. And Yet We Get To See Progress That In Some Ways Is Even More Profound Than The Great Advances That Digital Technology Has Provided.

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

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

Analytical Software Enables You To Shift Human Resources From Rote Data Collection To Value-added Customer Service And Support Where The Human Touch Makes A Profound Difference.

Data Collection

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'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.

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.

Whether It's Google Or Apple Or Free Software, We've Got Some Fantastic Competitors And It Keeps Us On Our Toes.

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.

Every Day Were Saying, 'how Can We Keep This Customer Happy?' How Can We Get Ahead In Innovation By Doing This, Because If We Don't, Somebody Else Will.

Loyal Customers

How We Deal With The Aids Epidemic Should Be One Of The Greatest Ways That The World Gets Measured. The Report Card For This Era.

Paper Is No Longer A Big Part Of My Day. I Get 90% Of My News Online, And When I Go To A Meeting And Want To Jot Things Down, I Bring My Tablet Pc. It's Fully Synchronized With My Office Machine So I Have All The Files I Need.

If We Have Optimism Without Empathy Then It Doesn't Matter How Much We Master The Secrets Of Science. We're Not Really Solving Problems, We're Just Working On Puzzles.

Our Leadership [in Microsoft ] Has That - "hey, We Are The Best In Certain Ways," And So We Get The Best People. That Any Kind Of Positive Dynamic Is Quite Good, So I Love What's Going On There, It's Fun.

What's Amazing Is, If Young People Understood How Doing Well In School Makes The Rest Of Their Life So Much Interesting, They Would Be More Motivated. It's So Far Away In Time That They Can't Appreciate What It Means For Their Whole Life.

What Destroys More Self-confidence Than Any Other Educational Thing In America Is Being Assigned To Some Remedial Math When You Get Into Some College, And Then It's Not Taught Very Well And You End Up With This Sense Of, 'hey, I Can't Really Figure Those Things Out.'

Self Confidence

We've Got To Put A Lot Of Money Into Changing Behavior.

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.

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.

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.

The Answer Is Simple, And Harsh. The Market Did Not Reward Saving The Lives Of These Children, And Governments Did Not Subsidize It. So The Children Died Because Their Mothers And Their Fathers Had No Power In The Market And No Voice In The System.

India Is More Of An Aid Recipient Than A Provider Of Aid.

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

Don't Let Yourself Be Lulled Into Inaction.

Married Life Is A Simpler Life. Who I Spend My Time With Is Established In Advance.

Don’t Tax My Income, Tax My Consumption.

The Willingness To Hear Hard Truth Is Vital Not Only For Ceos Of Big Corporations But Also For Anyone Who Loves The Truth. Sometimes The Truth Sounds Like Bad News, But It Is Just What We Need.

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.

The More You Learn, The More You Have A Framework That The Knowledge Fits Into.

Billionaires Should Never Be Responsible For Solving Problems, Because They're Not The Government.

I Was Lucky To Be Involved And Get To Contribute To Something That Was Important, Which Is Empowering People With Software.

What We're Really After Is Simply That People Acquire A Legal License For Windows For Each Computer They Own Before They Move On To Linux Or Sun Solaris Or Bsd Or Os/2 Or Whatever.

Even Though I Only Have A High-school Degree, I'm A Professional Student.

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.

If You Believe That Every Life Has Equal Value, It’s Revolting To Learn That Some Lives Are Seen As Worth Saving And Others Are Not. We Said To Ourselves: “this Can’t Be True. But If It Is True, It Deserves To Be The Priority Of Our Giving.”

Contrary To Piketty’s Rentier Hypothesis, I Don’t See Anyone On The [forbes 400 List Of The Wealthiest Americans] Whose Ancestors Bought A Great Parcel Of Land In 1780 And Have Been Accumulating Family Wealth By Collecting Rents Ever Since. In America, That Old Money Is Long Gone - Through Instability, Inflation, Taxes, Philanthropy, And Spending.

The Present And Future Of Knowledge Attainment And Essential Business Skills.

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.

We Are In The Throes Of A Transition Where Every Publication Has To Think Of Their Digital Strategy.

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.

Access To The Outside World Is Preventing More Censorship. I Do Think Information Flow Is Happening In China. .. There's No Doubt In My Mind That It's Been A Huge Plus.

Information Flow

If You Believe That All Men Are Created Equal, Then A Child's Death In Some Other Country Is No Less Tragic Than In The United States.

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.

The Computer Was Born To Solve Problems That Did Not Exist Before.

When I Was In My 40s, Microsoft Was My Primary Activity.

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.

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.

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.

As We Get Robots Becoming More Sophisticated, I Think We Should Worry Sooner Rather Than Later On How Much They Could Take Over, But I Think It'll Mostly Be A Positive Thing. In Terms Of Deadlines It Won't Be Any Worse Than Nuclear Weapons.

In Inner-city, Low-income Communities Of Color, There's Such A High Correlation In Terms Of Educational Quality And Success.

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

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

The World At Large Is Less Inequitable Today Than At Any Time In History. Number Of People In Abject Poverty, As A Percentage, Is At All-time Low.

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

This Is A Very Exciting Time In The World Of Information. It`s Not Just That The Personal Computer Has Come Along As A Great Tool. The Whole Pace Of Business Is Moving Faster. Globalization Is Forcing Companies To Do Things In New Ways.

Looking At These Issues As A Businessman, I Believe That Investing In The World's Poorest People Is The Smartest Way That Our Government Spends Money.

When You Want To Do Your Homework, Fill Out Your Tax Return, Or See All The Choices For A Trip You Want To Take, You Need A Full-size Screen.

K To 12 Is Partly About Babysitting The Kids So The Parents Can Do Other Things.

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.

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

The General Idea Of The Rich Helping The Poor, I Think, Is Important. That Your Sense Of Justice Says, Why Should Rich Kids - Who Barely Get These Diseases And Almost Never Die Of Them - Why Should They Get The Vaccines, When Poor Kids, Who Actually Do Die From These Diseases, Don't Get Those Things? It's An Unbelievable Inequity That There Isn't That Access.

The Key For Us, Number One, Has Always Been Hiring Very Smart People.

I Appoint The Laziest Person To Do The Hardest Job As They'll Find The Easiest Way To Do It

My Success, Part Of It Certainly, Is That I Have Focused In On A Few Things.

Focus In Business

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.

We All Have The Chance To Create A World Where Extreme Poverty Is The Exception Rather Than The Rule.

Windows 8 Is Key To The Future, The Surface Computer.

A Breakthrough In Machine Learning Would Be Worth Ten Microsofts.

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.

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.

We're Very Enthused About The Idea That In The Third Trimester We Actually Give The Mother A Vaccine And Her Antibodies, The Protective Things That The Immune System Makes, Actually Pass Through To The Baby, Both When The Baby Is Born, And Through The Mother's Milk. Because The Baby's Immune System Is Actually Not Very Strong For That First Few Months, Using The Mother's Immune System To Do This - It's A Very Exciting Idea And Something That We're Investing Heavily In.

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.

We Need A Malaria Epidemic In The Blogging Community! Either That Or We Need People Who Have Seen The Malaria Epidemic To Start Blogging.

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

Microsoft Went Into Orbit Because It Had A Booster Rocket Attached To It Called Ibm.

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.

Change The Boundaries Of Business.

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

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

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.

I Went To A Public School Through Sixth Grade, And Being Good At Tests Wasn't Cool.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Personal Computing Today Is A Rich Ecosystem Encompassing Massive Pc-based Data Centers, Notebook And Tablet Pcs, Handheld Devices, And Smart Cell Phones. It Has Expanded From The Desktop And The Data Center To Wherever People Need It - At Their Desks, In A Meeting, On The Road Or Even In The Air.

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.

The Chinese Are Clearly Inculcating The Idea That Science Is Exciting And Important, And That's Why They, As A Whole-they're Graduating Four Times As Many Engineers As We Are, And That's Just Happened Over The Last 20 Years.

Creating A Piece Of Software Is Always Complicated Because You're Doing Something New. If You Just Wanted Something That Had Been Done Before You'd Just Use That Old Piece Of Software. So There Are No Repetitive Tasks.

Life's Not Fair, Get Over It!

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

Microsoft Has Long Hired Based On Iq And "intellectual Bandwidth."

If Geek Means You're Willing To Study Things, And If You Think Science And Engineering Matter, I Plead Guilty. If Your Culture Doesn't Like Geeks, You Are In Real Trouble.

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.

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

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

People Should Just Buy A Cd And Rip It. You Are Legal Then.

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

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.

So It's An Absolute Lie That Has Killed Thousands Of Kids. Because The Mothers Who Heard That Lie, Many Of Them Didn't Have Their Kids Take Either Pertussis Or Measles Vaccine, And Their Children Are Dead Today. And So The People Who Go And Engage In Those Anti-vaccine Efforts -- You Know, They, They Kill Children. It's A Very Sad Thing, Because These Vaccines Are Important.

I Was Announcing To The Public, In 2006, That I'd Be Leaving Microsoft In A Couple Of Years And Focusing Full-time On The Foundation. That Was The Time At Which We Went Back To New York And Warren [buffett] Announced These Gifts To A Number Of Foundations, With A Very High Percentage Of It Going To Us And Basically Doubling Our Capacity.

Treatment Without Prevention Is Simply Unsustainable.

It's An Experiment, And It's Probably Good To Have A Couple States Try It Out To See Before You Make That National Policy.

In The Next 15 Years, We Can Halve Childhood Deaths. That's Doable.

Life Is A Lot More Fun If You Treat Its Challenges In Creative Ways.

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

There's A True Schizophrenia Where If You Say To Voters, You Know, Do You Think The Federal Government Spends Too Much Money And They Should Spend Less, They Say Yeah, Absolutely. Then You Name Specific Things, Like Pell Grants For Students And They Say, No, Not That. How 'bout Nih, Medical Research Funding? Nah, You Really Shouldn't Cut That. And Pretty Soon You've Proved That What The American Public Is Against Is Arithmetic.

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 Power Of Capitalism To Mediate The Gap Between Rich And Poor Is Pretty Incredible. Indeed, I Think, Year By Year, The Gap Gets Less.

More And More Software Would Just Increase The Number Of Tasks That The Computer Would Help Solve.

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.

Be Nice To Nerds. Chances Are You'll End Up Working For One.

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.

Virtually Every Company Will Be Going Out And Empowering Their Workers With A Certain Set Of Tools, And The Big Difference In How Much Value Is Received From That Will Be How Much The Company Steps Back And Really Thinks Through Their Business Processes, Thinking Through How Their Business Can Change, How Their Project Management, Their Customer Feedback, Their Planning Cycles Can Be Quite Different Than They Ever Were Before.

Ninety Percent Of The Cases Of Polio Are In Security-vulnerable Areas.

Playing Bridge Is A Pretty Old Fashioned Thing In A Way That I Really Like... I Do The Dishes Every Night - Other People Volunteer But I Like The Way I Do It.

The Part Of Uranium That's Fissile - When You Hit It With A Neutron, It Splits In Two - Is About 0.7%. The Reactors We Have Today Are Burning That 0.7%.

Banking Is Necessary - Banks Are Not.

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

I'm Certainly Well Taken Care Of In Terms Of Food And Clothes.

If You Are Born Poor Its Not Your Mistake, But If You Die Poor Its Your Mistake.

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.

It's Fine To Celebrate Success But It Is More Important To Heed The Lessons Of Failure.

I Regret Being The Richest Man In The World Because That Position Attracts Undeserved Publicity.

Take Our 20 Best People Away, And I Will Tell You That Microsoft Will Become An Unimportant Company

Whether You Believe It A Moral Imperative Or In The Rich World's Enlightened Self-interest, Securing The Conditions That Will Lead To A Healthy, Prosperous Future For Everyone Is A Goal I Believe We All Share.

Prosperous Future

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

When Aids Emergency Broke Out And Was Killing Millions In Africa, The Global Fund Was Created So That A Level Of Generosity Would Show Up And Buy The Medicines To Save Those Lives.

If You Were Born Poor, It's Not Your Fault. But If You Die Poor It Is.

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.

The Internet Is Becoming The Town Square For The Global Village Of Tomorrow.

When We Face A Choice Between Adding Features And Resolving Security Issues, We Need To Choose Security.

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.

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.

Only A Few Businesses Will Succeed By Having The Lowest Price, So Most Will Need A Strategy That Includes Customer Services.

A Lot Of The Things That Will Really Improve The World Fortunately Aren't Dependent On Washington Doing Something Different.

If You Want To Improve The Situation Of The Poorest Two Billion On The Planet, Having The Price Of Energy Go Down Substantially Would Be The Best Thing You Could Do For Them.

I Believe It’s Not Only Possible To Eradicate Malaria; I Believe It’s Necessary. Ultimately, The Cost Of Controlling It Endlessly Is Not Sustainable. The Only Way To Stop This Disease Is To End It Forever.

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

Trending Author

Harry A. Blackmun

Jennifer O'Neill

Richard Paul Evans

Category