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[melinda Gates] Is A Lot Of Fun To Work With. There's Some Of The People Skills That She's Better At And Cares About More. It'd Be A Mistake Not To Think Of Her As Very Numerical And Interested In The Science. I Enjoy, If I Get Ahead Of Her, Say, Understanding The Immune System, Then We Can Spend A Few Hours, Where I'm Going Through How Amazing It Is And Interesting, And How That Affects Our Creating New Products, So I've Always Had A Partner.

-Bill Gates

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[melinda Gates] Is A

Bill Gates

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[melinda Gates] Is A Lot Of Fun To Work With. There's Some Of The People Skills That She's Better At And Cares About More. It'd Be A Mistake Not To Think Of Her As Very Numerical And Interested In The Science. I Enjoy, If I Get Ahead Of Her, Say, Understanding The Immune System, Then We Can Spend A Few Hours, Where I'm Going Through How Amazing It Is And Interesting, And How That Affects Our Creating New Products, So I've Always Had A Partner.

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

In My Parents I Saw A Model Where They Were Really Always Communicating, Doing Things Together. They Were Really Kind Of A Team. I Wanted Some Of That Magic Myself.

The Most Important Thing Was The Creation Of A... A Standard, Where Hundreds Of Companies Build Hardware That Can All Run The Same Software.

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

If You Have 50 Different Plug Types, Appliances Wouldn't Be Available And Would Be Very Expensive. But Once An Electric Outlet Becomes Standardized, Many Companies Can Design Appliances, And Competition Ensues, Creating Variety And Better Prices For Consumers.

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

Philanthropy Is Fun And Fulfilling.

Inspiration Starts Somewhere.

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

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.

Convert Bad News To Good News.

Some People, Through Luck And Skill, End Up With A Lot Of Assets. If You're Good At Kicking A Ball, Writing Software, Investing In Stocks, It Pays Extremely Well.

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 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.

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

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.

What Are The Top 20 Universities In The World That Do Good Materials Research That Might Create Carbon Fibers To Do Jet Stream Kites Or New Magnets That Will Allow [energy] Generation To Be Done Up There And You Just Bring The Electricity Down. You Either Have To Bring Down Rotational Energy, Which Is Hard, Or You Have To Have The Generator Up There And Bring Down The Electricity. Well, Putting The Generator Up There Is Hard To Do Because It's Too Heavy.

Investing In Innovation, Which Was My Broad Theme Talking To [warren Buffett ], That Included Health Vaccines, It Included Energy And Education.

My Son Likes To Go See Mines And Electric Plants, Or The Large Hadron Collider, And We've Had A Chance To See A Lot Of Interesting Stuff.

Part Of The Magic Of Economic Growth Is How You Educate People, And The Leading Economies Have To Stay In Front Of That. From An Economic Point Of View, It Affects Competitiveness And Creates Jobs. Or From A Social Justice Point Of View, You Can Take Someone In The Bottom Tier Of Income And Let Him Compete To Be A Doctor Or Lawyer. The Education System Is The Only Reason The Dream Of Equal Opportunity Has A Chance Of Being Delivered - And We're Not Running A Good Education System.

Certain Teams Are More Careful In What They Write. They Generate Less Bugs. You Can Know That But It Still Doesn't Mean There Might Be There Might Not Be One Bug That Would Be Bad To Ship The Product With.

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

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.

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.

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

Don't Wallow In Failure. Instead, Learn From It.

I Can Understand Wanting To Have A Million Dollars But Once You Get Beyond That, I Have To Tell You, It's The Same Hamburger.

Let's Face It, The Average Computer User Has The Brain Of A Spider Monkey.

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.

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.

The World Needs Banking But It Does Not Need Banks.

There Were A Lot Of Missteps In The Early Days, But Because We Got In Early We Got To Make More Mistakes Than Other People.

Harnessing Steam Power Required Many Innovations, As William Rosen Chronicles In The Book 'the Most Powerful Idea In The World.'

I Think That Our Progress On Key Diseases Over The Next Several Decades Is Going To Be Pretty Amazing And So I Am Very Interested In That.

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.

My Guideline Has Always Been To Avoid A Focus On Me Personally. Not Because Of Any Deep, Dark Secrets. Rather Just A Sense Of Privacy.

Eradications Are Special. Zero Is A Magic Number. You Either Do What It Takes To Get To Zero And You're Glad You Did It; Or You Get Close, Give Up And It Goes Back To Where It Was Before, In Which Case You Wasted All That Credibility, Activity, Money That Could Have Been Applied To Other Things.

If You Give People Tools, And They Use Their Natural Abilities And Their Curiosity, They Will Develop Things In Ways That Will Surprise You Very Much Beyond What You Might Have Expected.

I Get More Spam Than Anyone I Know.

The Kids Are A Big Part Of My Schedule.

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

Taxes Are An Investment In America.

Playing Bridge Is A Pretty Old Fashioned Thing In A Way That I Really Like. I Was Watching My Daughter Ride Horses This Weekend And That Is Also A Bit Old Fashioned But Fun. I Do The Dishes Every Night - Other People Volunteer But I Like The Way I Do It.

Technology Is Unlocking The Innate Compassion We Have For Our Fellow Human Beings.

Hey, Size Works Against Excellence.

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.

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.

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

Now, We Put Out A Lot Of Carbon Dioxide Every Year, Over 26 Billion Tons. For Each American, It's About 20 Tons. For People In Poor Countries, It's Less Than One Ton. It's An Average Of About Five Tons For Everyone On The Planet. And, Somehow, We Have To Make Changes That Will Bring That Down To Zero.

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

Automation Applied To An Inefficient Operation Will Magnify The Inefficiency.

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

There Was A Magical Breakthrough When The Computer Became Cheap And We Could See That Everyone Could Afford A Computer.

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.

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

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

Connectivity Enables Transparency For Better Government, Education, And Health.

Government Education

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

People Everywhere Love Windows.

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

I Could Name About A Dozen Paths, And You'd Like To Have A Whole Bunch Of Research On All Those Paths, And Then, Eventually, At Least Four To Five Companies With Really Significant Financing Try And Get To Big Scale, Going Down And Really Trying To Prove It Out.

Solutions To All Biological Problems Are Greatly Advanced By The Sequencing Work And The New Tools That Are Created.

Flying Cars Are Not A Very Efficient Way To Move Things From One Point To Another.

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.

Don't Let Yourself Be Lulled Into Inaction.

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

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

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.

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

(talking About His First Computer) Like All Kids We Not Only Fooled Around With Our Toys, We Changed Them. If You've Ever Watched A Child With A Cardboard Carton And A Box Of Crayons Create A Spaceship With Cool Control Panels, Or Listened To Their Improvised Rules, Such As "red Cars Can Jump All Others," Then You Know That This Impulse To Make A Toy Do More Is At The Heart Of Innovative Childhood Play. It Is Also The Essence Of Creativity.

Our Success Has Really Been Based On Partnerships From The Very Beginning.

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.

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.

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

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

[melinda Gates] Is A Lot Of Fun To Work With. There's Some Of The People Skills That She's Better At And Cares About More. It'd Be A Mistake Not To Think Of Her As Very Numerical And Interested In The Science. I Enjoy, If I Get Ahead Of Her, Say, Understanding The Immune System, Then We Can Spend A Few Hours, Where I'm Going Through How Amazing It Is And Interesting, And How That Affects Our Creating New Products, So I've Always Had A Partner.

Be Nice To Nerds, They'll Probably Be Your Boss One Day.

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.

No More Misquoted Forms, Lost Invoices, Redundant Entries, Missing Checks, Or Delays Caused By Incomplete Paperwork.

I Think There Certainly Was A Milestone In The '90s With Regards To The Internet Achieving Critical Mass. There Were Several Magical Factors That Came Together: The Creation Of Html By Tim Berners-lee, The Drop In The Price Of Communications, And All The Pcs Out There That You Could Put This Software Into.

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'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.

Money Has Always Been In Politics. And I'm Not Sure You'd Want Money To Be Completely Out Of Politics.

Dos Is Ugly And Interferes With Users' Experience.

User Experience

Kids Are Taking Pcs And The Internet To New Heights. They're The Ones That Are Designing The Cutting-edge Web Sites.

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

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 I Had A Dollar For Every Time Someone Made Fun Of Me In High School-oh Wait, I Do!

I Know That Historically Our Foundation Has Had Great Relations With All The Administrations.[bill] Clinton Administration Did A Lot Of Outreach. The Greatest Rise In U.s. Foreign Aid Was Under The [george] Bush Administration, That's Where We Got The Aids Initiative, Which Is Called Pepfar.

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

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

In Order For The United States To Do The Right Things For The Long Term, It Appears To Be Helpful For Us To Have The Prospect Of Humiliation. Sputnik Helped Us Fund Good Science - Really Good Science: The Semiconductor Came Out Of It.

Antitrust Is The Way That The Government Promotes Markets When There Are Market Failures. It Has Nothing To Do With The Idea Of Free Information.

The Inventory, The Value Of My Company, Walks Out The Door Every Evening.

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

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

The Current Information Revolution Is A Cultural Revolution, A Social Revolution, A Thoroughgoing Technological Revolution That Involves Not Just Information, But Labor, Leisure, Entertainment, Communication, Education, Culture And Thus Is Part Of A Major Cultural And Social Shift.

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

The Us In Some Ways Has Been The Best. Who Figured Out Shale Gas? Although That Wasn't A Good Thing [for Co2 Levels], It Was Very Innovative. It's Led To Low-cost Energy. Who Figured Out Nuclear Power? Largely The United States. Once You Get Past The Steam Engine, Which Is Mostly British, Then The Us Has Been At The Center Of Most Of The Energy Things That Have Happened.

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

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

I Think If You Talk To The Experts In Any Field Where You Have To Take On A Unknown Challenge, Where You're Going To Be Working On It For A Long Time You'd Find That To Work Themselves Up To Their Best Performance And Really Throw Themselves Into It, You Know, Spend All These Hours In There And Ah, Give It Their... Give It Their Best That Optimism Plays A Role.

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

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?

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

So We Can Simulate Richter-10 Earthquakes. We Simulate 70-foot Waves Coming Into These Things. Very Cool. We Basically Say No Human Should Ever Be Required To Do Anything, Because If You Judge By Chernobyl And Fukushima, The Human Element Is Not On Your Side.

India Just Went 3 Years With No Cases [of Polio]. Pakistan Is Our Toughest Location Right Now Because Some Parts Of The Taliban Have Not Allowed Vaccinators To Come In And Have Even Attacked Vaccinators. We Are Hopeful This Will Get Resolved Since No One Wants Their Kid To Be Paralyzed. I Spend A Lot Of Time Making Sure The Polio Campaign Is Doing The Best It Can. We Have Great Computer Models That Help Guide Our Activities.

'i Don't Know' Has Become 'i Don't Know Yet'.

At Some Point, That Risk-taking Private Capital Can Take Over, And Have Patents And Trade Secrets And Things That Let Them Lead The Way, Which Happened With The Steam Engine And Some Other Things, Although With Energy, The Time Of Adoption Is A Lot Longer Than It Is With, Say, It Products Or Even Medical Advances, Like Drugs And Vaccines.

If You're Using First-class Land For Biofuels, Then You're Competing With The Growing Of Food. And So You're Actually Spiking Food Prices By Moving Energy Production Into Agriculture.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Don't Think There's A... Boundary Between Digital Media And Print Media. Every Magazine Is Doing An Online Version.

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 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.

We Will Never Make A 32-bit Operating System.

Operating Systems

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

Should Surveillance Be Usable For Petty Crimes Like Jaywalking Or Minor Drug Possession? Or Is There A Higher Threshold For Certain Information? Those Aren't Easy Questions.

Bitcoin Is A Technological Tour De Force

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

When You Lose A Customer, It Can Be Tempting To Tell Each Other, "that Customer's Not Very Sharp. They Just Made The Wrong Decision".

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

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.

I Think Given All The Different Imperatives - Getting Energy To Africa, Security Of Energy, Climate Change, That We Should Be Spending Half As Much As We Spend On Health, Which Will Get You All The Way Up To $15 Billion - The Health People Don't Like It When Things Get Compared To Their Number.

Philanthropy, Although It's Tiny Compared To The Government, It's 2% Of The Us Economy, Which Is The Largest Percentage, Other Than The Middle East.

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.

Creative Capitalism Takes This Interest In The Fortunes Of Others And Ties It To Our Interest In Our Own Fortunes In Ways That Help Advance Both. This Hybrid Engine Of Self-interest And Concern For Others Can Serve A Much Wider Circle Of People Than Can Be Reached By Self-interest Or Caring Alone.

Vaccination Is One Of The Easiest Things On The Way To Development. It's Much Easier Than Roads And A Great Education System. It's Very Basic. It's One Of The First Things You Want To Get Right.

It's The Knowledge Derived From Information That Gives You A Competitive Edge.

I Think It's Fair To Say That Personal Computers Have Become The Most Empowering Tool We've Ever Created. They're Tools Of Communication, They're Tools Of Creativity, And They Can Be Shaped By Their User.

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.

I Think That Society Has To Be Careful Not To Shift All Of Its Resources To The Elderly Versus The Young. I Get Very Concerned When People Talk About Cutting Education Budgets.

The Common Thread For Everything I Do Is This Idea Of A Web-services Architecture. What Does That Mean? It Means Taking Components Of Software And Systems And Having Them Be Self-describing, So That You Can Aim Them, Ask Them What Their Capabilities Are, And Communicate With Them Using A Standard Protocol.

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

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

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.

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

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

Human Condition

I Don't Think There Is Any Philosophy That Suggests Having Polio Is A Good Thing.

The Market Does Not Drive The Scientists, The Communicators, The Thinkers, The Government To Do The Right Things.

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

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

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

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

These Four Policy Prescriptions - Strengthening Educational Opportunities, Revamping Immigration Rules For Highly Skilled Workers, Increasing Federal Funding For Basic Scientific Research, And Providing Incentives For Private-sector R&d - Should In My View Be Top Priorities As Congress And The Administration Consider How To Maintain The Nation's Leadership In Science, Technology, And Innovation.

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.

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.

As We Have Taken Diarrhea And Pneumonia Down, Even Malaria Down Quite A Bit, The Portion Of The Days That Are Very Early In That 5 Years - The First Month, The First Day - It's About Half Now. Yet That's The Part We Understand The Least.

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

Network Marketing

Aids Itself Is Subject To Incredible Stigma.

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

If You Go Back To 1800, Everybody Was Poor. I Mean Everybody. The Industrial Revolution Kicked In, And A Lot Of Countries Benefited, But By No Means Everyone.

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

I Think We Knew That This Would Be Just Like Raising The Kids Together, This Would Be A Fun Thing To Do In Partnership. And You Know, We're So Lucky Because We Get To Hire In Very Smart People. We Get To Partner With Governments Like The Canadian Development Organization - Cida, Usaid - Tonnes Of Scientists Doing This Work. This Is Fascinating.

Innovations That Are Guided By Smallholder Farmers, Adapted To Local Circumstances, And Sustainable For The Economy And Environment Will Be Necessary To Ensure Food Security In The Future.

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.

By Almost Any Measure, The World Is Better Than It Has Ever Been. People Are Living Longer, Healthier Lives. Many Nations That Were Aid Recipients Are Now Self-sufficient. You Might Think That Such Striking Progress Would Be Widely Celebrated, But In Fact, Melinda And I Are Struck By How Many People Think The World Is Getting Worse. The Belief That The World Can’t Solve Extreme Poverty And Disease Isn’t Just Mistaken. It Is Harmful. That’s Why In This Year’s Letter We Take Apart Some Of The Myths That Slow Down The Work. The Next Time You Hear These Myths, We Hope You Will Do The Same.

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

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

Newspaper Readership Is Still Growing In India.

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

I Think Ebola Is A Great Example Of Where The World Really Needs To Come Together. The Three Countries Where This Outbreak Took Place Have Had A Lot Of Civil War, Very Weak Health Systems. And So, It Did Take A While For People To Understand ....that Eventually What We Saw Was A Very Unique Ebola Epidemic. I Think It Is Quite Impressive What's Being Pulled Together, And I Think We Will Be Able To Get This Under Control.

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

Perhaps I Should Be Flattered That Somebody Imagines The Name Is Worth So Much, Especially Since My Parents Gave Me The Same Name 42 Years Ago For Free.

It Is Hard To Sell Congress And The American People On Foreign Aid. Is It Harder To Do That Than It Is To Sell Billionaires On The Idea That They Should Give All Their Money Away.

If People Had Understood How Patents Would Be Granted When Most Of Today's Ideas Were Invented, And Had Taken Out Patents, The Industry Would Be At A Complete Standstill Today.

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

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.

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

In Most Of These Things Our Foundation Is A Co-funder, So I Can Say That A Polio Or An Hiv Vaccine, That I'm Putting Our Resources Behind It In A Very Big Way And The U.s. Government Would Be The Best Partner For Those Efforts.

No One Person Controls Microsoft. The Board And The Shareholders Decide Whether They Want To Have Me As Ceo.

We [us] Are The Biggest Per Person, By A Substantial Amount, Greenhouse Emitters, And We Give The Most Foreign Aid, Not Per Person But In Absolute. This Is Another Issue Where Hopefully We Will Take A Long-term Approach Which, Even Though We Sometimes Have A Hard Time Doing That, It's Easier For Us, As A Rich Country With This Kind Of Scientific Depth, Than It Is For The Poor Countries Who Will Suffer The Problems.

Your Customers Get Better When You Do.

Service Culture

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

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.

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

The World Is Not Flat, And Pcs Are Not, In The Hierarchy Of Human Needs, In The First Five Rungs.

We Are Seeing Smarter Philanthropy, More Philanthropy, And That's True World Wide. So It's Kind Of A Movement That Has A Lot Of Accomplishments, Even Though As A Percentage Of The Economy, It's Still Only A Few Per Cent.

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

Investing In Tomorrow's Technology Today Is More Critical Than Ever.

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.

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

By 2035, There Will Be Almost No Poor Countries Left In The World.

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

Test Scores Aren't Perfect, But Having A Test Score For Math Or Reading Or Other Things That We Can Objectively Measure Is A Meaningful Component That Makes A Lot Of Sense.

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

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

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.

All Lives Have Equal Value. And So You Say, 'why Do Poor Children Die When Other Children Don't? Why Do Some People Have Enough Nutrition Or Reasonable Toilets And Other People Don't?' So Those Basic Needs That, Through Innovation, Actually It's Very Affordable To Bring Them...to Everyone.

Every Company Can Choose Whether To Lead Or Follow The Emerging Digital Trends.

Microsoft's Only Factory Asset Is The Human Imagination.

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

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

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.

Certainly I'll Never Be Able To Put Myself In The Situation That People Growing Up In The Less Developed Countries Are In. I've Gotten A Bit Of A Sense Of It By Being Out There And Meeting People And Talking With Them.

To Succeed, You Also Have To Know How To Make Choices And How To Think More Broadly.

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