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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.

-Bill Gates

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Sometimes We Do Get

Bill Gates

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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.

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The Wright Brothers Created The Single Greatest Cultural Force Since The Invention Of Writing. The Airplane Became The First World Wide Web, Bringing People, Languages, Ideas, And Values Together.

In Fact, That's Where My Vision Of The Coming Digital Opportunity Is Somewhat Different From Other People's. I Divide It Into Three Parts. One Is The Office. That's The One I'm Most Excited About And Is The Most Concrete.

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

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.

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.

Living On $6 A Day Means You Have A Refrigerator, A Tv, A Cell Phone, Your Children Can Go To School. That's Not Possible On $1 A Day.

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

It's Fantastic That Microsoft In The Cloud Space Is One Of Very Few Companies That's Got The Critical Mass, The Particular Emphasis On Helping Business Customers Get Up To That Cloud With All The Unique Requirements They Have. It's Very Exciting.

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.

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.

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

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.

Spam Will Be A Thing Of The Past In Two Years' Time.

Humanity’s Greatest Advances Are Not In Its Discoveries – But In How Those Discoveries Are Applied To Reduce Inequity.

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.

Cutting Through Complexity To Find A Solution Runs Through Four Predictable Stages: Determine A Goal, Find The Highest-leverage Approach, Discover The Ideal Technology For That Approach, And In The Meantime, Make The Smartest Application Of The Technology That You Already Have - Whether It's Something Sophisticated, Like A Drug, Or Something Simpler, Like A Bednet.

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

At Microsoft There Are Lots Of Brilliant Ideas But The Image Is That They All Come From The Top - I'm Afraid That's Not Quite Right.

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.

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

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

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

I Feel Pretty Stupid That I Don't Know Any Foreign Languages. I Wish I Knew French Or Arabic Or Chinese.

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.

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.

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

I Never Took A Day Off In My Twenties. Not One. And I'm Still Fanatical, But Now I'm A Little Less Fanatical.

At Every Juncture, Advanced Tools Have Been The Key To A New Wave Of Applications, And Each Wave Of Applications Has Been Key To Driving Computing To The Next Level.

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

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

It's Easier To Add Things On To A Pc Than It's Ever Been Before. It's One Click, And Boom, It Comes Down.

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

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

Another Trick In Software Is To Avoid Rewriting The Software By Using A Piece That's Already Been Written, So Called Component Approach Which The Latest Term For This In The Most Advanced Form Is What's Called Object Oriented Programming.

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

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

You've Got To Be Willing To Read Other People's Code, Then Write Your Own, Then Have Other People Review Your Code.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

It Is Hard To Overstate How Valuable It Is To Have All The Incredible Tools That Are Used For Human Disease To Study Plants.

For One Thing, There's An Essential Human Factor In Every Business Endeavor. It Doesn't Matter If You Have A Perfect Product, Production Plan And Marketing Pitch; You'll Still Need The Right People To Lead And Implement Those Plans.

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

Who Decides What's In Windows? The Customers Who Buy It.

If You Mess Up, It's Not Your Parents' Fault, So Don't Whine About Your Mistakes, Learn From Them.

Over 80% Of The Poor Are People Who Have Small Plots Of Land And Grow Their Own Food And They Don't Grow Enough To Sell Much Into The Marketplace. So They Will Be Hit Hard By The Worst In Climate. They Really Get Hit Hard Starting In The 20-year Time Frame And Thereafter.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

Aids We're - Most Of These Diseases - We Are Down From The Peak. We're Down About 40 Per Cent From The Peak And If We Got The Right Vaccines, Which Are At The Early Stage Of Discovering, Then The Numbers Would Come Down Very Dramatically. So That's Why We Talk About It As An Emergency.

Common Core Is A Big Win For Education.

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

Steve Jobs' Ability To Focus In On A Few Things That Count, Get People Who Get User Interface Right, And Market Things As Revolutionary Are Amazing Things.

Bringing Together The Right Information With The Right People Will Dramatically Improve A Company's Ability To Develop And Act On Strategic Business Opportunities.

There's 20 Companies That I Have Investments In - Some Batteries, Some Solar-thermal, One Big Nuclear Thing. We Need Hundreds And Hundreds Of Companies Like That, So That In A 20-year Time Frame We Really Are Starting To Change The Energy Infrastructure.

Dos Is Ugly And Interferes With Users' Experience.

User Experience

There's Always Been A Lot Of Information About Your Activities. Every Phone Number You Dial, Every Credit-card Charge You Make. It's Long Since Passed That A Typical Person Doesn't Leave Footprints.

Computer Science … Jobs Should Be Way More Interesting Than Even Going To Wall Street Or Being A Lawyer--or, I Can Argue, Than Anything But Perhaps Biology, And There It's Just A Tie.

I Have An Excellent Memory, A Most Excellent Memory.

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.

Software Innovation, Like Almost Every Other Kind Of Innovation, Requires The Ability To Collaborate And Share Ideas With Other People, And To Sit Down And Talk With Customers And Get Their Feedback And Understand Their Needs.

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

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.

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.

Microsoft Has Some Assets Like Office That Have Stayed Strong And There's So Much Room For Innovation In Those.

If People Want Capital Gains Taxed More Like The Highest Rate On Income, That's A Good Discussion. Maybe That's The Way To Help Close The Deficit.

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

Information Flow

[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 Didn't Completed My University Education

University Education

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Instead Of Buying Airplanes And Playing Around Like Some Of Our Competitors, We've Rolled Almost Everything Back To The Company.

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

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

(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.

Philanthropy Should Be Taking Much Bigger Risks That Business. If These Are Easy Problems, Business And Government Can Come In And Solve Them.

I Believe In Generous Aid Policies.

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

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

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

The Fact That There Was No Catastrophic Pandemic In Recent History Does Not Mean There Won't Be Another One. And We Are Certainly Not Prepared For The Next Pandemic.

Why Do People Benefit In Inverse Proportion To Their Need? Well, Market Incentives Make That Happen.

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

You Will Not Make $60,000 A Year Right Out Of High School. You Won't Be A Vice-president With A Car Phone Until You Earn Both.

The Advance Of Technology Is Based On Making It Fit In So That You Don't Really Even Notice It, So It's Part Of Everyday Life.

[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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Lot Of People Assume That Creating Software Is Purely A Solitary Activity Where You Sit In An Office With The Door Closed All Day And Write Lots Of Code.

I've Always Been Interested In Science - One Of My Favourite Books Is James Watson's 'molecular Biology Of The Gene.'

Molecular Biology

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.

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

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

In 80% Of The World, Energy Will Be Bought Where It Is Economic. You Have To Help The Rest Of The World Get Energy At A Reasonable Price.

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.

Often You Have To Rely On Intuition.

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.

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.

Software Substitution, Whether It's For Drivers Or Waiters Or Nurses ... It's Progressing. ... Technology Over Time Will Reduce Demand For Jobs, Particularly At The Lower End Of Skill Set. ... 20 Years From Now, Labor Demand For Lots Of Skill Sets Will Be Substantially Lower. I Don’t Think People Have That In Their Mental Model.

If You Say To People That There's Less Violence Today Than In The Past, They Would Be Stunned To Hear That. But It's The Truth, Even Though We Have Awful Things Happening In Syria Or Sudan.

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.

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.

In Low-income Countries, Getting To A Health Post Is Hard. It's Very Expensive.

Skype Actually Does Get A Fair Bit Of Revenue.

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

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.

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.

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

On The Supply Side, For Innovation, You'd Say, Go Look At Those R&d Budgets, And They Haven't Moved In The Last 20 Years. In The Case Of The Us - Which Is The Majority Of R&d Funding Across Every Category You Can Name: Health, Energy, Whatever - It's Been About $5 Billion A Year From The Department Of Energy.

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

Sometimes, I Think My Most Important Job As A Ceo Is To Listen For Bad News. If You Don't Act On It, Your People Will Eventually Stop Bringing Bad News To Your Attention And That Is The Beginning Of The End.

So Not Only Are We Saving Lives Now, We're Creating The Incentive For The Breakthroughs That Over The Next Generation Will Mean We Can Take Aids, Malaria And Tb And Bring Those Numbers Dramatically Down.

The Tool That's Most Associated With The Recent Progress Against Malaria Is The Long-lasting Bed Net. Bed Nets Are A Fantastic Innovation. But We Can Do Even Better. We Can Invent New Ways To Control The Mosquitoes That Carry The Malaria Parasite.

If There Was An Epidemic, That Definitely Would Make People Accept Vaccines. I Wouldn't Hope For That, Of Course, But If You Wanted People To Love Vaccines, An Epidemic Would Remind Them How Magical They Are.

I Believe Technology Will Continue To Become More Affordable And More People Will Have The Chance To Use It. This Will Help More People Get Medical Care And A Good Education.

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

Teaching's Hard! You Need Different Skills: Positive Reinforcement, Keeping Students From Getting Bored, Commanding Their Attention In A Certain Way.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

In The Old Generation, If One Kid Bought A Playstation 2 And The Other Kid Bought An Xbox, At His House You Played Playstation, At Your House You Played Xbox. Now That It's Online, All Those Early Buyers Who... You Want To Play With, They've Got Their Reputation Online Of Who They Are And How Good They Are At These Games.

I Have To Admit That Business-type Thoughts Do Sneak Into My Head: I Hope Our Customers Pay Us, I Hope This Stuff Is Decent, I Hope We Get It Done On Time. The Little Additions And Subtractions That One Has To Do. Take Sales, Take Costs And Try To Get That Big Positive Number At The Bottom.

In The Philanthropy Game, You're Going For Different Outcomes: Saving Childhood Lives, Having Kids Grow Up - Because They Don't Have Malnutrition Or Disease - That They Achieve Their Full Potential. We Take For Warren [buffett] Things That, Because He's Very Intelligent About The World But Doesn't Get To Go Out In Africa And See What We See, We've Taken And Say To Him Where We Stand And It's Basically A Very Positive Report That His Gift Has Made A Phenomenal Difference.

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.

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

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

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

I Studied Every Thing But Never Topped.... But Today The Toppers Of The Best Universities Are My Employees

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

I Think (the Internet) Is Contributing To Chinese Political Engagement..access To The Outside World Is Preventing More Censorship.

The Ceo's Role In Raising A Company's Corporate Iq Is To Establish An Atmosphere That Promotes Knowledge Sharing And Collaboration.

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

There Are A Variety Of Techniques For Breaking Software Down Into Pieces And Making Software Development More Efficient. Many Of These Techniques Have Been Sort Of... And Everybody Got Excited About But Very Little Benefit Was Actually Derived Once The Thing Was Put Into Practice.

I Have A Particular Relationship With Vinod Khosla Because He's Got A Lot Of Very Interesting Science-based Energy Startups.

Very Interesting

Vaccines Are A Miracle; They're Fantastic. Anything That Makes People Hesitate To Give Their Children These Vaccines According To The Recommended Schedule Creates Risk. Risk For The Children Who Don't Get Vaccinated And Risk For Children, Some Of Whom Don't Have An Immune System, So They're Benefiting From The Fact That The Community Protection Means The Disease Doesn't Get To Them.

It Is Hard To Smash A Computer When You're Laughing.

Positive Thinking

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

The Internet Is Just A Passing Fad.

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

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

Well Depending On The Government, You Either Work Through The Government, Which Is Ideal, Because Then You're Strengthening Their Capabilities, Or You Work Through The Non-governmental Organizations. It's Never Easy, And You Know, It's Just About The Very Basics Of Health. This Is Not Hospitals. This Is Just Primary Health Care [in Africa], The Most Simple Things, And Even So, Getting The Supplies Out, Getting The Trained Workers There.

In The Same Way That When The Car Got Going, People Thought It Would Be An Electric Car, People Thought It Would Be A Steam Car.

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.

Microsoft Has Had Clear Competitors In The Past. It's A Good Thing We Have Museums To Document That.

To Get A Big Company Moving Fast, Especially On A Many-headed Opportunity Like The Internet, You Have To Have Hundreds Of People Participating And Coming Up With Ideas.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Considering Their Impact, You Might Expect Mosquitoes To Get More Attention Than They Do. Sharks Kill Fewer Than A Dozen People Every Year, And In The U.s. They Get A Week Dedicated To Them On Tv Every Year.

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.

(in Response To Java) Anybody Who Thinks A Little 9,000-line Program That's Distributed Free And Can Be Cloned By Anyone Is Going To Affect Anything We Do At Microsoft Has His Head Screwed On Wrong.

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.

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

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.

Is The Rich World Aware Of How Four Billion Of The Six Billion Live? If We Were Aware, We Would Want To Help Out, We'd Want To Get Involved.

Business Success

Self Improvement

I Believe The Government Has The Right To Recover From The Heirs To The Fortunes Of Its Most Successful Citizens Some Portion Of Those Fortunes.

Reward Worthy Failure - Experimentation.

Making Mistakes

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.

[warren Buffett ] Met With All Sorts Of Different Groups About A Lot Of Different Things, But Yes, He Took The Time, He Listened And He Wanted To Understand About Some Of The Different Diseases And The Strength Of The American Role In Doing All These Things.

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.

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

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

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

Imagine, Just For The Sake Of Discussion, That You Had A Few Hours A Week And A Few Dollars A Month To Donate To A Cause - And You Wanted To Spend That Time And Money Where It Would Have The Greatest Impact In Saving And Improving Lives. Where Would You Spend It?

Everything On The Internet Is Real God Damn It!

It's Energy Intensification, Where We Essentially Have, Through Our Light Bulbs And Cars, The Manpower Of [hundreds Of] People Working On Our Behalf, Helping Our Food Being Created, Helping Our Materials Like Steel And Plastic And Wood And Paper Be Created. Our Lifestyles Are Incredibly Energy Intense.

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

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

While Microsoft Does Not Share All Of Oracle's Ambitions For Java, We Agree That It Is A Very Valuable Tool For Software Developers.

You Can Be A Business Thinker.

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

Human Condition

Humanity’s Greatest Advances Are Not In Its Discoveries – But In How Those Discoveries Are Applied To Reduce Inequity. Whether Through Democracy, Strong Public Education, Quality Health Care, Or Broad Economic Opportunity – Reducing Inequity Is The Highest Human Achievement.

If You Get Health, Then You Have Opportunity For Literacy. Health First, Then Literacy. Once You Have Literacy, Then You Have A Chance To Bring In The New Tools Of Communication. Let People Reach Out And Have Access To The Latest Advances.

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.

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.

If You're Asking Whether I Intentionally Mess Up My Hair, No, I Don't. And Certain Things, Like My Freckles, They're Just There. I Don't Do Anything Consciously. I Suppose I Could Get Contact Lenses. I Suppose I Could Comb My Hair More Often.

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.

I Reboot [my Windows Pc] Every Night.

What I Do Best Is Share My Enthusiasm.

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.

Innovation Is Often The Hidden Thing, Because We Can't Put Numbers To It. And Yet It's The Thing That Defines The Way We Live, The Things We'd Like To Have For Everyone Whether It's Health Or Education.

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

Intellectual Property Has The Shelf Life Of A Banana.

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Hattie McDaniel

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