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If You're A Guest [at My $113 Million House], You'll Be Able To Call Up On Screens Throughout The House Almost Any Image You Like - Presidential Portraits, Reproductions Of High Renaissance Paintings, Pictures Of Sunsets, Airplanes, Skiers In The Andes, A Rare French Stamp, The Beatles In 1965.

-Bill Gates

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If You're A Guest

Bill Gates

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If You're A Guest [at My $113 Million House], You'll Be Able To Call Up On Screens Throughout The House Almost Any Image You Like - Presidential Portraits, Reproductions Of High Renaissance Paintings, Pictures Of Sunsets, Airplanes, Skiers In The Andes, A Rare French Stamp, The Beatles In 1965.

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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.

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

Computers And Games Don't Waste Time - People Do.

The Bulk Of The Universities Are About Teaching Kids.

As I Look Forward, I'm Very Optimistic About The Things I See Ahead.

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.

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

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.

You Know Capitalism Is This Wonderful Thing That Motivates People, It Causes Wonderful Inventions To Be Done. But In This Area Of Diseases Of The World At Large, It's Really Let Us Down.

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

People Can Criticize Microsoft For Supporting This Tv Thing For The Past Eight Years, But It Is A Long-term Bet, There Is Not Any Other Software Business That Is As Dedicated To The Vision Of The Tv And The Pda [personal Digital Assistant] As We Are.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Often You Just Have To Rely On Your Intuition.

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.

Never Before In History Has Innovation Offered Promise Of So Much To So Many In So Short A Time.

Technology Is Just A Tool. In Terms Of Getting The Kids Working Together And Motivating Them, The Teacher Is The Most Important.

If I Will Start All Over Again I Would Chose Network Marketing.

Network Marketing

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

Common Core Is A Big Win For Education.

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.

Spam Is Taking E-mail, Which Is A Wonderful Tool, And Exploiting The Idea That It's Very Inexpensive To Send Mail.

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.

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

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.

I Would Certainly Use My Voice To Try And Avoid Anything That Undermines Confidence, So That Parents Are Using Vaccines Fully.

Your Customers Get Better When You Do.

Service Culture

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

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

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

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.

Long-term Vision And Product Strategy.

The Microprocessor Is A Miracle.

The Software Is Where The Magic Is. If You're Going To Have All This Power Be Simple Enough, Appealing Enough And Cool Enough, It's Going To Be Because The Software Is Right.

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

I Didn't Completed My University Education

University Education

If African Farmers Can Use Improved Seeds And Better Practices To Grow More Crops And Get Them To Market, Then Millions Of Families Can Earn Themselves A Better Living And A Better Life.

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

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

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

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

[smart] Is An Elusive Concept. There's A Certain Sharpness, An Ability To Absorb New Facts. To Ask An Insightful Question. To Relate To Domains That May Not Seem Connected At First. A Certain Creativity That Allows People To Be Effective.

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

Teams Should Be Able To Act With The Same Unity Of Purpose And Focus As A Well Motivated Individual.

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.

I Don't Have Any Tvs With Their Over-the-air Receivers Connected In My House. But When I'm In A Hotel Room Or Other Places That Have A Tv, Then I Turn It On And Flip The Channels Just Like Everybody Else. I'm Not Immune To The Lures Of Television. I Just Try To Stay Away From It Because I Like To Read.

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 Genius Of Capitalism Lies In Its Ability To Make Self-interest Serve The Wider Interest. The Potential Of A Big Financial Return For Innovation Unleashes A Broad Set Of Talented People In Pursuit Of Many Different Discoveries. This System, Driven By Self-interest, Is Responsible For The Incredible Innovations That Have Improved So Many Lives.

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

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.

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

There's A Basic Philosophy Here That By Empowering...workers You'll Make Their Jobs Far More Interesting, And They'll Be Able To Work At A Higher Level Than They Would Have Without All That Information Just A Few Clicks Away.

Robots Will Play An Important Role In Providing Physical Assistance And Even Companionship For The Elderly.

Great Organizations Demand A High Level Of Commitment By The People Involved. Eliminate Politics, By Giving Everybody The Same Message. Keep A Flat Organization In Which All Issues Are Discussed Openly. Empower Teams To Do Their Own Things.

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.

Don't Let Yourself Be Lulled Into Inaction.

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

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 Potential Financial Reward For Building The 'next Windows' Is So Great That There Will Never Be A Shortage Of New Technologies Seeking To Challenge It.

If I'd Had Some Set Idea Of A Finish Line, Don't You Think I Would Have Crossed It Years Ago?

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.

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

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

Americans Want Students To Get The Best Education Possible. We Want Schools To Prepare Children To Become Good Citizens And Members Of A Prosperous American Economy.

People Cannot Become Truly Knowledgeable Without Being Excellent Readers.

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.

The Scientific Understanding Of Some Of These [childhood] Diseases Is Advancing Quite Rapidly. There's Some Things Like Premature Birth Or Nutrition, First Day Deaths That We Need A Lot More Insights So That We Can Build The Tools To Solve Those Problems.

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

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.

We're Changing The World With Technology.

Changing The World

As You Get To The End Of The Project You Want To Run All The Tests Cases Against One Version And Make Sure That You Know That That Version Passed Everything. And So As You Get Late In The Project You Get A Little More Conservative About Making Radical Changes To The Software.

Sometimes We Do Get Taken By Surprise. For Example, When The Internet Came Along, We Had It As A Fifth Or Sixth Priority.

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

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.

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

You Can Make Money And You Can Make Excuses, But You Can Never Make Money Out Of Excuses

In Low-income Countries, The Main Problems You Have Is Infectious Diseases.

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

Understanding Science And Pushing The Boundaries Of Science Is What Makes Me Immensely Satisfied.

The Way To Be Successful In The Software World Is To Come Up With Breakthrough Software, And So Whether It's Microsoft Office Or Windows, Its Pushing That Forward. New Ideas, Surprising The Marketplace, So Good Engineering And Good Business Are One In The Same.

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

Treatment Without Prevention Is Simply Unsustainable.

I Like To Read General Biology - Things About The Immune System And Advances In That Area - Because It Lays The Foundation For My Part Of The Dialogue At The Foundation About What Things We Ought To Pursue.

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

I Really Do Think Cancer Will Largely Be A Solved Problem. I Think Most Of The Infectious Diseases Like Malaria - Our Foundation Is Very Involved - Once We're Finishing Polio Eradication, Then Starting Up This Malaria Eradication, And Getting That Done As Fast As We Can.

The Ebola Epidemic Can Serve As An Early Warning Wake-up Call To Get Ready. If We Start Now, We Can Be Ready For The Next Epidemic.

With The States Release Today Of A Set Of Clear And Consistent Academic Standards, Our Nation Is One Step Closer To Supporting Effective Teaching In Every Classroom, Charting A Path To College And Careers For All Students, And Developing The Tools To Help All Children Stay Motivated And Engaged In Their Own Education. The More States That Adopt These College And Career Based Standards, The Closer We Will Be To Sharing Innovation Across State Borders And Becoming More Competitive As A Country.

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.

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

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.

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

My Wife Thinks She's Better Than Me At Puzzles. I Haven't Given In On That One Yet.

Online Education Is Pretty Special For Two Reasons. One Is That You Can Get The Very Best Lecture In The World And Wherever You Are, Whenever You Want, You Can Connect To That Lecture. The Other Is This Interactivity, Where If You Know A Topic, You Can Kind Of Skip Over It. Or If You're Confused About It, [the Area] Where You're Confused Can Be Analyzed By Software.

I Believe Innovation Is The Most Powerful Force For Change In The World. People Who Are Pessimistic About The Future Tend To Extrapolate From The Present In A Straight Line. But Innovation Fundamentally Shifts The Trajectory Of Development.

Making Sure All Our Students Get A Great Education, Find A Career That's Fulfilling And Rewarding, And Have A Chance To Live Out Their Dreams ... Wouldn't Just Make Us A More Successful Country - It Would Also Make Us A More Fair And Just One.

Here At Work We're All Just Trying To Get A Job Done. My People Have The Confidence Of Their Convictions And They Know Their Skills. And That Occupies Most Of My Time.

Unemployment Rates Among Americans Who Never Went To College Are About Double That Of Those Who Have A Postsecondary Education.

Nobody Spends Any Money On Smallpox Unless They Worry About A Bio-terrorist Recreating It.

Most Of Our Competitors Were One-product Wonders... They Would Do Their One Product, But Never Get Their Engineering Sorted Out.

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.

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.

I Didn't Even Complete My University Education

University Education

By The Time We See That Climate Change Is Really Bad, Your Ability To Fix It Is Extremely Limited... The Carbon Gets Up There, But The Heating Effect Is Delayed. And Then The Effect Of That Heat On The Species And Ecosystem Is Delayed. That Means That Even When You Turn Virtuous, Things Are Actually Going To Get Worse For Quite A While.

You Might Say, Well, Aren't People Saying That About Wind And Solar Today? Not Really. Only In The Super-narrow Sense That The Capital Costs Per Output, When The Wind Is Blowing, Is Slightly Lower.

We Are Seeing Pioneers Moving Out To The Internet, Banks That Are Taking Transactions, Retail Shopping On The Internet, And Although It's Going To Take Most Of A Decade Before Most Adults Are Turning To The Internet For A High Percentage Of Their Act

Software Is The Magic Thing Whose Importance Only Goes Up Over Time.

Software Will Get To Be Somewhat More Mature, Ah, But It Will Never Be As Predictable As Most Areas Of Engineering.

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

I Have An Excellent Memory, A Most Excellent Memory.

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.

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

You Have The Refugee Crisis Triggered By Syria. That's Got A Lot Of Costs Associated With It. Domestically, Budgets Are Incredibly Tight Because The Economy's Not Generating The Growth That Makes For Easy Trade-offs.

If I Was Down To The Last Dollar Of My Marketing Budget I'd Spend It On Pr!

Exposure From A Young Age To The Realities Of The World Is A Super-big Thing.

Creativity Allows People To Be Effective.

Setting Clear Goals And Finding Measures That Will Mark Progress Toward Them Can Improve The Human Condition.

Robotics And Other Combinations Will Make The World Pretty Fantastic Compared With Today.

The World Is Progressing And Resources Are Becoming More Abundant. I'd Rather Go Into A Grocery Store Today Than A King's Banquet A Hundred Years Ago.

There Is No Doubt Pc Prices Will Be Coming Down.

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

When I Was In College, For The Games Of That Era, I Was As Hard Core As Anyone Was. I Wouldn't Say I Outgrew It, But You Always Have To Have A Finite Number Of Addictions.

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.

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

In Energy, You Have To Plan And Do Research Way In Advance, Sometimes Decades In Advance To Get A New System That's Safer, Doesn't Require Us To Go Around The World To Get All Our Oil.

One Of The Wonderful Things About The Information Highway Is That Virtual Equity Is Far Easier To Achieve Than Real-world Equity...we Are All Created Equal In The Virtual World And We Can Use This Equality To Help Address Some Of The Sociological Problems That Society Has Yet To Solve In The Physical World.

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.

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.

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.

Some People Read Off Of Their Palms And Pocket Pcs, But The Real Immersible Reading Experience Takes A Full-screen Device.

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.

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

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.

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 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

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

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.

A Fundamental New Rule For Business Is That The Internet Changes Everything.

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.

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

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

I Think The Positive Competition Between States In India Is One Of The Most Positive Dynamics That The Country Has.

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

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 Do Normal Kind Of Contributions, Particularly For People Who Are Going Over To Africa And Help Highlighting Global Health, And That's Tended To Be Pretty Bipartisan In Nature Because Of The Coalition There Exists Fortunately Around These Global Health Issues. But I Don't Think My Backing, Putting A Lot Of Money Into Political Contributions Is A Way I'm Going To Try And Help Improve The World.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Public Education

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

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.

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

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

For Africa To Move Forward, You've Really Got To Get Rid Of Malaria.

There Are Gmo Skeptics More In Europe Maybe Than In Other Places, But Not Exclusively.

The Leader Needs To Create An Environment In Which People Can Analyze The Situation And Develop A Good Response.

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.

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.

India Has Over 20 Percent Of The Kids Born In The World. And They Move Around A Lot.

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

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

The Machines Need To Get Faster. They Need To Get Cheaper.

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.

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

I Think There Will Be Pcs At Every Price Point.

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

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.

Strategically, A Major Function Of The Ceo Is To Look For Bad News And Encourage The Organization To Respond To It. Employees Must Be Encouraged To Share Bad News As Much As Good News.

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.

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

In Almost Every Area Of Human Endeavor, The Practice Improves Over Time. That Hasn't Been The Case For Teaching.

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.

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.

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.

Don’t Tax My Income, Tax My Consumption.

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

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

China Is Certainly An Important Player In The Global Economy, And A Widespread Aids Epidemic Would Threaten That Growth.

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.

Bridge Is The King Of All Card Games.

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

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.

The Year I Was Born, 1955, The First Big Disease-eradication Program In The World Was Declared For Malaria. After About A Decade Of Work, They Realized That, At Least In The Tropical Areas, They Did Not Have The Tools To Get It Done.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Was Lucky To Be In The Right Place At The Right Time. But Many Others Were Also In The Same Place. The Difference Was That I Took Action.

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.

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.

When Ford Sells A Car, A Dealer Isn't Allowed To Take Out The Engine And Put A Different One In. When A Newsstand Sells The Washington Post, No One Can Go To The Newsstand And Pay Them To Rip Out The Classified Section And Put Their Own Classified Section In - If They Could, They Would Do So.

Natural Epidemics Can Be Extremely Large. Intentionally Caused Epidemics, Bioterrorism, Would Be The Largest Of All.

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Jean De La Bruyere

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