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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.

-Bill Gates

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I'm Truly Saddened To

Bill Gates

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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.

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I Think Philanthropy Is Also Growing And Catching On. Figuring Out How The Philanthropy Sector, Which Is Quite Small Compared To The Private Sector, Which Is The Biggest By Far, And Then The Governments, You Know, Even In These Poor Countries Over Time Has To Take On These Key Responsibilities. How Does Philanthropy Accelerate That? Drive The Kind Of Innovations, Make Sure They Get Used Well. So It Plays This Kind Of Special Role.

When You Are Failing, You Are Forced To Be Creative, To Dig Deep And Think, Night And Day.

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.

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.

I Understand How Every Healthy Child, Every New Road, Puts A Country On A Better Path, But Instability And War Will Arise From Time To Time, And I'm Not An Expert On How You Get Out Of Those Things.

Leaders Are Those Who Empower Others.

There Are Ecosystems Like Coral Reefs [at Risk] Through Ocean Acidification. Those Are Valuable Things That We Should Protect.

We Should All Grow Our Own Food And Do Our Own Waste Processing, We Really Should.

The Internet Is The Easiest Thing To Get Into. To Be An Internet Retailer, You Just Get That Url.

Information Work Is Thinking Work.

The World Is Very Disparate, In Terms Of The Us Using The Most Energy Per Person, And Then The Other Rich Countries - Europe, Japan, New Zealand - Using About Half Of What We Do, And Then The World Average Being About A Fifth Of What We Use, With China Just Now Surpassing The World Average.

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.

From The Day Microsoft Was Started, The Only Constraint To Our Growth Has Been Attracting Ah, More Great Programmers, Very Smart, Committed, Ah, People. And So We're Always On... On The Look For Ah, That Kind Of Person.

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.

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

Intellectual Property Has The Shelf Life Of A Banana.

If You Really Could Take The Co2, When You Burn Hydrocarbons - Coal, For Example - If You Could Really Capture The Carbon And Sequester It - They Call It Ccs - If The Extra Capital Cost, Energy Cost, And Storage Costs Over Time Didn't Make It Super Expensive, Then That's Another Path That You Could Go Down.

There Was A Concept A Long Time Ago That You Would Do A Different Type Of Reactor Called A "fast Reactor," That Would Make A Bunch Of Another Element Called Plutonium, And Then You Would Pull That Out, And Then You Would Burn That. That's Called "breeding" In A Fast Reactor. That Is Bad Because Plutonium Is Nuclear Weapons Material. It's Messy. The Processing You Have To Get Through Is Not Only Environmentally Difficultly, It's Extremely Expensive.

I Didn't Used To Wear A Watch. Now I Have A Spot Watch, Which I Wear All The Time.

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.

I Hope Someday What People Can Do With Their Lives Depends On Their Talents And How Hard They Are Willing To Work, Rather Than On Where They Happen To Be Born.

As For Drugs - Well, Gates Was Certainly Not Unusual There. Marijuana Was The Pharmaceutical Of Choice.

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.

America And Japan Are The Two Leading World Economies In Terms Of Technology And Innovative Products. And In Software, Information-age Technology And Biotechnology The U.s. Has An Amazing Lead.

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.

Now, If You're Rich, You Can Spend A Lot Of Money, Netherlands-style, And Reduce That. But Bangladesh Or Parts Of India, Like Calcutta, They Just Simply Won't Be Able To Afford That Kind Of Protection.

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.

The Billion People Who Wake Up Every Day Trying To Figure Out If They Have Enough Food To Eat Won't Be At Davos.

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.

[africa] Is The One Continent Where You Still Have A Lot More Young People Than Old People. So Making Sure They're Healthy, Good Nutrition, Good Education. That'll Be Important For The World.

Improving The Health & Productivity Of The Poorest Is One Of The Best Investments You Can Make In The Future Of The World

When You Have A Product That Has Zero Sales, It Is Easy For People To Say Whatever They Want About It And Almost Fantasize About It.

I've Said Some Stupid Things And Some Wrong Things, But Not That. No One Involved In Computers Would Ever Say That A Certain Amount Of Memory Is Enough For All Time.

Whenever You Have A Few Setbacks, The Idea That Half As Many Children Are Dying Now As Back In 1990 And So... It Was Over 12 Million A Year, Now It's Less Than 6 Million A Year. We Have A Clear Path To Get That Under 3 Million A Year And We Know What To Do. And This Generation Of Young Africans Is A Very Large Group.

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

If We Think Long Term, The Younger Generation Here Is Better About Embracing The World. Not Seeing Countries Boundaries Kind Of An "us Versus Them" Thing.

The Nuclear Industry Has This Amazing Record, Even Equipment From Generations One And Two. But Nuclear Mishaps Tend To Come In These Big Events - Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, And Now Fukushima - So It's More Visible.

The Next Big Invention That Will Change The Way We Live Should Be Things Like Ways Of Generating Energy Like Electricity.

A Breakthrough In Machine Learning Would Be Worth Ten Microsofts.

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.

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

Once You Embrace Unpleasant News, Not As A Negative But As Evidence Of A Need For Change, You Aren't Defeated By It. You're Learning From It.

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.

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

Our Flame Is Taking The Normal Depleted Uranium - The 99.3 Percent That's Cheap As Heck, And There's A Pile Of It Sitting In Paducah, Kentucky That's Enough To Power The United States For Hundreds And Hundreds Of Years. You're Taking That And You Are Converting It To Plutonium - And Then You're Burning That.

When You Program, You Want To Think You're Writing The Best Possible Program For The... For The Task You're Trying To Solve.

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.

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.

My Mom And My Dad Were Both Very Sociable, Meeting Lots Of Interesting People.

And Knowledge Management Is A Means, Not An End.

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.

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?

I Agree With People Like Richard Dawkins That Mankind Felt The Need For Creation Myths. Before We Really Began To Understand Disease And The Weather And Things Like That, We Sought False Explanations For Them. Now Science Has Filled In Some Of The Realm – Not All – That Religion Used To Fill.

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.

If You Are Low Income In The United States, You Have A Higher Chance Of Going To Jail Than Getting A 4-year Degree.

Helping Convene Global Stakeholders To Establish A Set Of Measurable, Actionable And Consensus-built Goals Focused On Extreme Poverty Is Invaluable.

There Is A Difference Between What Technology Enables And What Historical Business Practices Enable.

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

Our Work In Global Health Is About Things Like Cutting Childhood Deaths, And Every Year We Continue To Make Progress There.

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.

The Human Body Is The Most Complex System Ever Created. The More We Learn About It, The More Appreciation We Have About What A Rich System It Is.

Of My Mental Cycles, I Devote Maybe 10 Percent To Business Thinking. Business Isn't That Complicated. I Wouldn't Want To Put It On My Business Card.

On My Desk I Have Three Screens, Synchronized To Form A Single Desktop. I Can Drag Items From One Screen To The Next. Once You Have That Large Display Area, You'll Never Go Back, Because It Has A Direct Impact On Productivity.

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

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

By Helping Us To Be More Productive, Technology Lets Us To Spend Less Time Focusing On Survival, And More On Solving Other Challenges.

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

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.

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.

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. Actually, The Dark Horse In That Race Was Internal Combustion, But Because Of The Energy Density Of Gasoline And Discovery Of Oil In Large Amounts At That Point In First Pennsylvania And Then Texas, It Won Out Over Those Other Two, To The Point That Those Other Two Are Actually Viewed As Obscure Footnotes In History.

Reward Worthy Failure - Experimentation.

Making Mistakes

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

Of All The Statistics In Health, Death Is The Easiest, Because You Can Go Out And Ask People, "hey, Have You Had Any Children Who Died, Did Your Siblings Have Any Children Who Died?" People Don't Forget That.

Well Private Money Can Take Risks In A Way That Government Money Often Isn't Willing To.

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

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

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.

It’s Been Proven That Of All The Interventions To Reduce Poverty, Improving Agricultural Productivity Is The Best.

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

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

There's A Lot That Can Be Done For People Who Are Using Technology In A Better Way.

Netscape Was Able To Get The Government Working On Its Behalf.

It's Really Kind Of Cool To Have Solar Panels On Your Roof.

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.

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.

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?

I Get More Spam Than Anyone I Know.

I Believe That If You Show People The Problems And You Show Them The Solutions They Will Be Moved To Act.

I Remember Thinking Quite Logically That I Didn't Want To Spoil My Children With Wealth And So That I Would Create A Foundation, But Not Knowing Exactly What It Would Focus On.

Does The E-mail Say It's About 'enlargement' - That Might Be Spam.

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

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

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.

Well, No One Gives Aid To Zimbabwe Through The Mugabe Government.

If We [microsoft Corporation] Weren't Still Hiring Great People And Pushing Ahead At Full Speed, It Would Be Easy To Fall Behind And Become A Mediocre Company. Fear Should Guide You, But It Should Be Latent. I Have Some Latent Fear. I Consider Failure On A Regular Basis.

Well The Global Fund, Because Of How Well It's Worked On Not Only Aids, But Also Malaria And Tuberculosis, I'd Say It's Well Accepted. I Mean, It's Not Politically Controversial That This Is A Great Humanitarian Effort. But Budgets Are Very Very Tight.

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.

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

The Government Is There Day In And Day Out, If You Want All Kids To Have Education, If You Want To Run Courts, If You Want To Have An Army, If You Want To Have Roads, You've Got To Have The Taxation System That Funds Everything That You Expect.

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.

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

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

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

Measuring Programming Progress By Lines Of Code Is Like Measuring Aircraft Building Progress By Weight.

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.

U.k. Companies Are In Very International And Very Competitive Markets. If You Look At Pc Penetration In The U.k., It Is Very Similar To The United States Market.

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

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

Ridiculous Sums Of Money Can Be Confusing.

Eventually We'll Be Able To Sequence The Human Genome And Replicate How Nature Did Intelligence In A Carbon-based System.

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.

Internet Tv And The Move To The Digital Approach Is Quite Revolutionary. Tv Has Historically Has Been A Broadcast Medium With Everybody Picking From A Very Finite Number Of Channels.

The Need To Communicate Effectively With Your Customers Will Come Up Again And Again.

You Have A Meeting To Make A Decision, Not To Decide On The Question.

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.

Whether I'm At The Office, At Home, Or On The Road, I Always Have A Stack Of Books I'm Looking Forward To Reading.

The Outside Perception And Inside Perception Of Microsoft Are So Different. The View Of Microsoft Inside Microsoft Is Always Kind Of An Underdog Thing.

During The Past Two Centuries, Innovation Has More Than Doubled Our Life Span And Given Us Cheap Energy And More Food. If We Project What The World Will Be Like 10 Years From Now Without Continuing Innovation In Health, Energy Or Food, The Picture Is Dark.

Teaching Is The Human Thing, In Terms Of Building The Kids' Self-confidence, So If We Take The Broad Ways That We Want To See Society To Be Better, Science Can Only Provide Certain Pieces Of That.

Self Confidence

My Job Is About The Most Fun Thing I Do, But I Have A Broad Set Of Interests, Going Places, Reading Things, Doing Things.

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.

We Have To Find A Way To Make The Aspects Of Capitalism That Serve Wealthier People Serve Poorer People As Well.

Success Is A Lousy Teacher. It Makes You Think You Know What You're Doing.

When You Develop Software, The People Who Write The Software, The Developers Are The Key Group But The Testers Also Play An Absolutely Critical Role. They're The Ones Who Ah, Write Thousands And Thousands Of Examples And Make Sure That It's Going To Work On All The Different Computers And Printers And The Different Amounts Of Memory Or Networks That The Software'11 Be Used In. That's A Very Hard Job.

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

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.

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

I Believe Os/2 Is Destined To Be The Most Important Operating System, And Possibly Program, Of All Time. As The Successor To Dos, Which Has Over 10,000,000 Systems In Use, It Creates Incredible Opportunities For Everyone Involved With Pcs.

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.

Should There Be Cameras Everywhere In Outdoor Streets? My Personal View Is Having Cameras In Inner Cities Is A Very Good Thing. In The Case Of London, Petty Crime Has Gone Down. They Catch Terrorists Because Of It. And If Something Really Bad Happens, Most Of The Time You Can Figure Out Who Did It.

A Top-quartile Teacher Will Increase The Performance Of Their Class - Based On Test Scores - By Over 10 Percent In A Single Year. ... That Means That If The Entire U.s., For Two Years, Had Top-quartile Teachers, The Entire Difference Between Us And Asia Would Go Away.

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

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 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.

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.

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

Some Very Poor Countries Run Great Vaccination Systems, And Some Richer Ones Run Terrible Programs.

The Early Personal Computers Were Not Very Powerful So The Idea Of Feeding Their Program Into A Small Amount Of Memory Requires Immense Skill.

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

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.

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.

China Adopted A Capitalist System In The 1980s, And They Went From A 60% Poverty Rate To 10%.

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

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.

This Whole Phenomenon Of The Computer In A Library Is An Amazing Thing.

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.

When You Write A Piece Of Software You Assume A Certain Type Of Hardware. If You Assume Hardware That's Too Powerful Then You Can't Sell Many Copies Cause Very Few People Have That Machine. If You Assume Hardware That's Too Simple Your Product Can't Do As Much.

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

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.

Getting Ready For A Global Pandemic Is Every Bit As Important As Nuclear Deterrence And Avoiding A Climate Catastrophe.

Flipping Burgers Is Not Beneath Your Dignity. Your Grandparents Had A Different Word For Burger Flipping - They Called It Opportunity.

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

Taking A Look Back, One Big Reqret Is, I Left Harvard With No Real Awareness Of The Awful Inequities In The World. The Appalling Disparities Of Health And Wealth And Opportunity That Condemned Millions Of People To The Lives Of Despair. I Learned A Lot Here At Harvard About New Ideas And Economics, And Politics. I Got Great Exposure To The Advances Being Made In The Sciences. But Humanities Greatest Advances Are Not In Its Discoveries, But In How Those Discoveries Are Applied To Reduce Inequity.

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.

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

I’ve Been Waiting More Than 30 Years To Say This: “dad, I Always Told You I’d Come Back And Get My Degree.” I Want To Thank Harvard For This Timely Honor. I’ll Be Changing My Job Next Year … And It Will Be Nice To Finally Have A College Degree On My Resume.

Creativity Allows People To Be Effective.

If You Want To Build A Great Company, Get The Hell Out Of Silicon Valley.

Microsoft Is Involved In Setting Some Fairly Key Standards And People Are Afraid Of It Because They Think, Geez, They Are Quite Capable. It's Daunting, I Suppose.

Software Is Different Than Other Products Um, Partly Because It's, It's Not Physical And, And Partly Because Of Its Complexity. You Can Express In Software Millions Of Different Cases And Making Sure That You Handle All Of Them Correctly Is Extremely Difficult.

With Nuclear Weapons, You'd Think You Would Probably Stop After Killing 100million. Smallpox Won't Stop. Because The Population Is Naïve, And There Are No Real Preparations. That, If It Got Out And Spread, Would Be A Larger Number.

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.

People Always Fear Change. People Feared Electricity When It Was Invented, Didn't They? People Feared Coal, They Feared Gas-powered Engines... There Will Always Be Ignorance, And Ignorance Leads To Fear. But With Time, People Will Come To Accept Their Silicon Masters.

We Need To Look At Less Obvious Paths, Things Like The Wind In The Jet Stream, Which Is Very High Up. The Material Science Of What Type Of Kite String You Would Need To Connect Up To That. That's Still At The Basic Research Level.

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

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.

Embrace Bad News To Learn Where You Need The Most Improvement.

I Am Not In Competition With Anyone But Myself. My Goal Is To Improve Myself Continuously.

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

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

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.

Vaccines Are Extremely Well Tested; Their Safety Is Well Understood. The False Allegations About Vaccines Causing Autism Have Been Disproven. But There Are Still Echoes Out There Confusing People.

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

Stolen's A Strong Word. It's Copyrighted Content That The Owner Wasn't Paid For.

Digital Technology Has Several Features That Can Make It Much Easier For Teachers To Pay Special Attention To All Their Students.

To Win Big, You Sometimes Have To Take Big Risks.

The Trouble With Energy Farming Is That The Energy Isn't Always Where You Want To Use It, And It Isn't Always When You Want To Use It.

I'm Not An Educator ... I'm A Learner.

I Didn't Even Complete My University Education

University Education

Contraception Really Shouldn't Be All That Controversial Because It's A Tool A Woman Can Use To Delay Her First Birth Until She's, Say, 18 Or 19 Years Old.

I Don't Like Typing Messages On My Phone. Some People Get Used To It.

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 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.

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.

Often You Just Have To Rely On Your Intuition.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Anyway, The Us, As In Most Issues, Is The Best, Has The Best Capability To Lead, And Really Needs To Lead. It Doesn't [mean] That Other Countries Won't Pick Different Tacks And Emphasize Different Things. In Aggregate, They're Almost Half Of The Energy R&d. Europe, China, Japan - It's Very Important That They Come Along And Contribute To These Things.

You Always Overestimate What You Can Get Done In A Year And Underestimate What You Can Get Done In 10 Years.

Being Flooded With Information Doesn't Mean We Have The Right Information Or That We're In Touch With The Right People.

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.

I Have A Nice Office. I Have A Nice House... So I'm Not Denying Myself Some Great Things. I Just Don't Happen To Have Expensive Hobbies.

I 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!

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.

Like Any Well Designed Software Product, Windows Is Designed, Developed And Tested As An Integrated Whole.

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Katherine Anne Porter

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