Background Image

...

My Tax Return In The United States Has To Be Kept On A Special Computer Because Their Normal Computers Can't Deal With The Numbers. So I Am Constantly Getting These Notices Telling Me I Haven't Paid Something When Really It Is Just On The Wrong Computer.

-Bill Gates

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

My Tax Return In

Bill Gates

...

My Tax Return In The United States Has To Be Kept On A Special Computer Because Their Normal Computers Can't Deal With The Numbers. So I Am Constantly Getting These Notices Telling Me I Haven't Paid Something When Really It Is Just On The Wrong Computer.

Views: 12

Topic

More From Bill Gates

We All Know That There Are These Exemplars Who Can Take The Toughest Students, And They'll Teach Them Two-and-a-half Years Of Math In A Single Year.

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

The Future Of Windows Is To Let The Computer See, Listen And Even Learn.

Don't Let Yourself Be Lulled Into Inaction.

I'm An Investor In A Number Of Biotech Companies, Partly Because Of My Incredible Enthusiasm For The Great Innovations They Will Bring.

Don't Let Complexity Stop You.

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.

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.

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

Your School May Have Done Away With Winners And Losers, But Life Has Not.

You Know, I'm A Big Believer In Touch And Digital Reading, But I Still Think That Some Mixture Of Voice, The Pen And A Real Keyboard - In Other Words A Netbook - Will Be The Mainstream On That.

Research Shows That There Is Only Half As Much Variation In Student Achievement Between Schools As There Is Among Classrooms In The Same School. If You Want Your Child To Get The Best Education Possible, It Is Actually More Important To Get Him Assigned To A Great Teacher Than To A Great School.

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.

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.

My Fascination Is Broadly With Biology And The Fact That Our Increased Understanding Of Biology Allows For Breakthroughs In A Broad Set Of Diseases.

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

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.

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.

If You're Taking Care Of Your Family And Society And Are Comfortable You Can Start To Think About Helping Those Most In Need Globally. That's How We Became Engaged In Those Things.

Dos Is Ugly And Interferes With Users' Experience.

User Experience

Scientists And Companies Weren't Creating Things Like New Vaccines. Now That We Have This Fund That's There To Buy At The Lowest Price, But Buy For Those People These Medicines, We See Scientists Everywhere Coming Up With Those New Tools.

Creating Things

We're Still Missing About A Dozen Vaccines That Will Make A Huge Difference. For Adults, We've Got Hiv And Tb Are Still Huge; For Kids Malaria Is Still Killing A Half Million Kids A Year Out Of That 6 Million. We Probably Need Some Vaccines, But We Need A Little More Data To Make Sure We're Getting The Vaccines That Will Save The Most Lives.

I Think There Will Be Pcs At Every Price Point.

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 Rely Too Much On The People In Other Countries And Other Companies, In A Sense That's Your Brain And You Are Outsourcing Your Brain.

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

We Will Never Make A 32-bit Operating System.

Operating Systems

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

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.

Eventually You Won't Think Of 'the Internet Business.' You'll Think Of It More Like News, Weather, Sports, But Even That Taxonomy Isn't Clear.

If I Only Had Two Dollars Left I Would Spend One Dollar On Pr.

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.

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

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.

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

Convert Bad News To Good News.

We Work With Whoever Is Elected. Some Will Bring A More Generous, Open View Of The World Than Others.

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.

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

It's Not Easy To Remember, But Ibm Was The Computer Industry When I Was Growing Up. You Loved 'em. You Hated 'em. You Knew What They Were Doing. They Had Set A Standard For Mainframes. They Also Set A Standard For Great Sales Focus And Heavy Product R & D.

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

Just In Terms Of Allocation Of Time Resources, Religion Is Not Very Efficient. There's A Lot More I Could Be Doing On A Sunday Morning.

I Have Not Met [donald] Trump And Discussed Any Issues With Him. There Have Been Republican Administrations Like The [george] Bush Administration Who Initiated This Aids Generosity. So It's Not Purely A Right-left Thing.

Learn From Your Unhappy Customers.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Microsoft Is A Company That Manages Imagination.

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

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.

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

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

[we In Microsoft] Are Not The Only Software Company But We Are A Great Software Company Doing Some Unique Work.

Finally, Assuming That Many Of Those Are Fulfilled, Which Won't Be Easy In Tight Budget Times, We're Taking The Supply Side At The Basic Research Level, Because That's Where Government Is Absolutely Fundamental.

If Your Business Is Not On The Internet, Then Your Business Will Be Out Of Business.

Network Marketing

Finding Information Is Either A Software Question Or A Question Of How Much Information Is Online.

Bitcoin Is A Technological Tour De Force

We're At The Point Now Where The Challenge Isn't How To Communicate Effectively With E-mail; It's Ensuring That You Spend Your Time On The E-mail That Matters Most.

Treatment Without Prevention Is Simply Unsustainable.

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.

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

The Information Highway Will Transform Our Culture As Dramatically As Gutenberg's Press Did The Middle Ages.

Being Maniacal About Something Is Very Helpful.

Success On The Web Require High-level Corporate Understanding Of The Internet's Capabilities And Support Of Early Test-and-invest Projects.

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

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

The U.s. And Canada Are Two Generous Governments And We Reach Out And Partner With Anyone Who Believes In Foreign Aid.

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

There Are No Significant Bugs In Our Released Software That Any Significant Number Of Users Want Fixed.

[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.

I Think There's Even A Chance That [r&d And Innovation Budgets] Might Be Increased [during Donald Trump Administration] And We Should Go And Make That Case To The Executive Branch, To The Congress.

What I Do Best Is Share My Enthusiasm.

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.

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

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

The Close Relationships We Form Between Researchers And Product Groups Have Already Shown We Can Move The Great Ideas As They Come Along, Without A Schedule, Into The Products.

Computers Are Great Because When You're Working With Them You Get Immediate Results That Let You Know If Your Program Works. It's Feedback You Don't Get From Many Other Things.

If I Hadn't Given My Money Away, I'd Have Had More Than Anyone Else On The Planet.

Apple Has Always Leveraged Technologies That The Pc Industry Has Driven To Critical Mass - The Bus Structures, The Graphics Cards, The Peripherals, The Connection Networks, Things Like That - So They're Kind Of In The Pc Ecosystem And Kind Of Not.

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 Barrier To Change Is Not Too Little Caring; It Is Too Much Complexity.

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.

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.

Bioterrorism Is Like Earthquakes, You Should Think In Order Of Magnitudes. If You Can Kill 10 People That's A One, 100 People That's A Two... Bioterrorism Is The Thing That Can Give You Not Just Sixes, But Sevens, Eights And Nines.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I'm Not Somebody Who Goes To Church On A Regular Basis. The Specific Elements Of Christianity Are Not Something I'm A Huge Believer In.

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.

I Was A Kind Of Hyper-intense Person In My Twenties And Very Impatient.

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

Software Is Definitely Engineering. It's Different In That We Take On Novel Tasks Every Time. It's Not Like Building A Certain Bridge That Is Virtually Identical To Some Previous Bridge Or Some Previous Building.

We're Changing The World With Technology.

Changing The World

There Is No Doubt Pc Prices Will Be Coming Down.

Software Suppliers Are Trying To Make Their Software Packages More 'user-friendly'... Their Best Approach So Far Has Been To Take All The Old Brochures And Stamp The Words 'user-friendly' On The Cover.

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

Government Education

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

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

We Can Make Market Forces Work Better For The Poor If We Can Develop A More Creative Capitalism-if We Can Stretch The Reach Of Market Forces So That More People Can Make A Profit, Or At Least Make A Living, Serving People Who Are Suffering From The Worst Inequities. ... You Have More Than We Had; You Must Start Sooner, And Carry On Longer.

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.

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

Know Your Numbers' Is A Fundamental Precept Of Business.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Money Has No Utility To Me Beyond A Certain Point.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The Thing About Hd-dvd That Is Attractive To Microsoft Is That It's Very Pro-consumer In Letting You Copy All Movies Up Onto The Hard Disk.

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

Whenever There Is Hard Work To Be Done, I Assign It To The Laziest Man As He Is Sure To Find An Easy Way Of Doing It. Be Lazy, Think Crazy.

Inspiration Starts Somewhere.

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

Everything On The Internet Is Real God Damn 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.

[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.

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

The Barrier To Change Is Not Too Little Caring; It Is Too Much Complexity. To Turn Caring Into Action, We Need To See A Problem, See A Solution, And See The Impact. But Complexity Blocks All Three Steps.

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.

I Have A Company That Is Not Microsoft, Called Corbis. Corbis Is The Operation That Merged With Bettman Archives. It Has Nothing To Do With Microsoft. It Was Intentionally Done Outside Of Microsoft Because Microsoft Isn't Interested.

(on Being The World's Richest Man) I Wish I Wasn't ... There's Nothing Good That Comes Out Of That. You Get More Visibility As A Result Of It.

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

Television Is Not Real Life. In Real Life People Actually Have To Leave The Coffee Shop And Go To Jobs.

When You Have A Fortune That Is Almost Hard To Imagine, The Best Thing Is Not To Pass That On To One's Children. That Distorts Their Life Situation.

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.

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.

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

The Most Important Work I Got A Chance To Be Involved In, No Matter What I Do, Is The Personal Computer... I Even Knew Not To Get Married Until Later Because I Was So Obsessed With It. That's My Life's Work.

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 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.

The Only Thing I Understand Deeply, Because In My Teens I Was Thinking About It, And Every Year Of My Life, Is Software. So I'll Never Be Hands-on On Anything Except Software.

The Term, Information At Your Fingertips, Is To Remind People What A Broad Role The Personal Computer Will Be Playing. It's Not A Computation Device, It's Not A Word Processing Or A Spreadsheet Device. It's A Window Onto The World Of Information.

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.

There's Only One Trick In Software, And That Is Using A Piece Of Software That's Already Been Written.

We Always Overestimate The Change That Will Occur In The Next Two Years And Underestimate The Change That Will Occur In The Next Ten. Don't Let Yourself Be Lulled Into Inaction.

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.

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.

I Have Seen Firsthand That Agricultural Science Has Enormous Potential To Increase The Yields Of Small Farmers And Lift Them Out Of Hunger And Poverty.

Hunger And Poverty

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

Life Is Not Fair Get Used To Used To It

Good High School Graduation

We Certainly See Opportunities In Vietnam For Talented People To Have Jobs In The It Sector, Including The Improvement Of The Efficiency Of The Economy And The Government.

We Need To Cooperate Globally On Epidemic Preparedness And Prevention In The Same Way We Are Cooperating Globally To Stop People From Getting Nuclear Weapons.

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

By Improving Health, Empowering Women, Population Growth Comes Down.

Software Is Inherently Complicated. If You Say To Somebody I Want An Airline Reservation System, To Really Say What You Want In Terms Of Overbooking And Fares, And Different Airlines Communicating With Each Or Schedule Changes, It's Immensely Complex. And So You Can't Write A Program That's Any Simpler Than That Full Specification.

Even When I Wrote Basic Myself The Day Before I Burned It Into A Computer I Wasn't Making Design Changes. I Didn't Have A Testing Team. I Did All The Testing Myself. And There Was No Project Methodology Or Schedule That, There Was The Notion Of Coming To A Close Means Testing A Lot At The End And Making Very Few Changes.

Talking To Mothers, Always Brings It Home Because They're So Anxious To Do Everything They Can For Their Kids And So Tragic For Them.

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

The Bulk Of The Universities Are About Teaching Kids.

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.

The Next Time Someone Tells You We Can Trim The Budget By Cutting Aid, I Hope You Will Ask Whether It Will Come At The Cost Of More People Dying.

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.

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

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.

We [corbis] Make It So Easy To Call Up Images, Whether Art Or People Or Beaches Or Sunsets Or Nobel Prize Winners.

Microsoft Is Always Two Years Away From Failure.

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.

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

Data Collection

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

People Are Always Coming Up To Me And Saying, 'i Heard Your Dad's Speech, And It's Really Great.' And They'll Mention Some Place I Didn't Even Know My Dad Was Going To.

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.

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.

In K-12, Almost Everybody Goes To Local Schools. Universities Are A Bit Different Because Kids Actually Do Pick The University. The Bizarre Thing, Though, Is That The Merit Of University Is Actually How Good The Students Going In Are: The Sat Scores Of The Kids Going In.

The Difference Between A Stranger Sending You A Message That You Might Be Interested In At A Very Low Volume Level, No Repetition, Just Sending It To Very Few People, And That Being Done As Spam - Those Things Get Close Enough That You Want To Be Careful Never To Filter Out Something That's Legitimate.

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.

The Trick Generally Is To Break Programs Into Pieces And Have Those Pieces Be Individually Testable And So Then When You Move On To The Other Pieces You Treat It As A Black Box Knowing That It Either Works Or Doesn't Work.

Technology Must Be Implemented As Part Of A Thoughtful, Holistic Approach To Education Transformation That Includes Teacher Training, Relevant Curricula, Parental Involvement, And Programs For Children That Fill Unmet Needs For Basics Like Nutrition And Health Care.

I Am Results-oriented.

This Antitrust Thing Will Blow Over.

Make It Just Like A Mac.

Windows Is Probably The Most Important Product In The Entire Pc Industry. Everything We Do In Terms Of Supporting Touch, New Hardware, Accessibility Has Incredible Impact.

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.

I Don't Think There's Anything Unique About Human Intellience. All The Nuerons In The Brain That Make Up Perceptions And Emotions Operate In A Binary Fashion.

People Often Overestimate What Will Happen In The Next Two Years And Underestimate What Will Happen In Ten.

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.

In A Budget, How Important Is Art Versus Music Versus Athletics Versus Computer Programming? At The End Of The Day, Some Of Those Trade-offs Will Be Made Politically.

The End Of The Day

Aids Itself Is Subject To Incredible Stigma.

How You Gather, Manage, And Use Information Will Determine Whether You Win Or Lose.

You Can't Have A Rigid View That All New Taxes Are Evil.

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

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?

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

We'll Have Infinite Bandwidth In A Decade's Time.

The Most Important People Is To Pick People Who Like To Write Software And Who Are Good At... Good Developers Like Working With Each Other. And They... They Reinforce Each Other's Skills.

Trending Author

Category