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This [philanthropy] Work Is Even More Fascinating. It Requires Us To Think Harder About How We Build Partnerships, Who We Get Behind. And Yet We Get To See Progress That In Some Ways Is Even More Profound Than The Great Advances That Digital Technology Has Provided.

-Bill Gates

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This [philanthropy] Work Is

Bill Gates

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This [philanthropy] Work Is Even More Fascinating. It Requires Us To Think Harder About How We Build Partnerships, Who We Get Behind. And Yet We Get To See Progress That In Some Ways Is Even More Profound Than The Great Advances That Digital Technology Has Provided.

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

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

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.

The Main Thing That's Missing In Energy Is An Incentive To Create Things That Are Zero-co2-emitting And That Have The Right Scale And Reliability Characteristics.

Even For The Very Best Programmers Ah, Sometimes You'll See Someone Else's Program Or Somebody Will Come Along And They'll Show You What Can Be Done In A Simpler Way.

Bangladesh Is Largely A River Delta, And The Rising Sea Level Means That When Storms Come In, The Human Sanitation Is Backing Up, The Ability To Farm.

We Have Completely Eradicated Smallpox; We Have Almost Eradicated Polio. That's The Miracle Of Vaccines, Which Is Even Greater Than That Of Antibiotics.

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.

[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.

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 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

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

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

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

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".

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.

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.

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

Public Education

The U.s. Immigration Laws Are Bad - Really, Really Bad. I'd Say Treatment Of Immigrants Is One Of The Greatest Injustices Done In Our Government's Name.

We Really Have To Work Hard To Remind People Even Though This Is Far Away, That's It's Probably The Most Generous Thing Governments Have Ever Come Together To Do. Since World War Ii, This New Institution Is The Only One That's Emerged And Is Saving All These Lives.

Headlines, In A Way, Are What Mislead You Because Bad News Is A Headline, And Gradual Improvement Is Not.

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.

I'm Truly Saddened To Learn Of Steve Jobs' Death. The World Rarely Sees Someone Who Has Had The Profound Impact Steve Has Had, The Effects Of Which Will Be Felt For Many Generations To Come. For Those Of Us Lucky Enough To Get To Work With Him, It's Been An Insanely Great Honor. I Will Miss Steve Immensely.

When I Was Trying To Figure Out Why Lives Have Improved So Much In The Last 300 Years, Where We've Gone From A Third Of Kids Dying Before 5 To - By 1990 It Was Down To 10% - Now It's Down To 5%. And Saying Why, Over All History, There Were Smart People, But That Number Didn't Change. Average Life Span Didn't Change. What's Magical About What's Been Deemed The Industrial Revolution? It's Really Energy Intensity.

It's A Nice Reader, But There's Nothing On The Ipad I Look At And Say, 'oh, I Wish Microsoft Had Done It.'

I'm A Great Believer That Any Tool That Enhances Communication Has Profound Effects In Terms Of How People Can Learn From Each Other, And How They Can Achieve The Kind Of Freedoms That They're Interested In.

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

It Was Really Phenomenal [warren Buffett Donation]. It Grew Out Of The Friendship That We Had And The Fact That His Plan To Have His Wife Run The Foundation And Give Things Away Changed When She Tragically Died.

Www? Nice Toy, But What A Waste Of Time.

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.

In Software You Can't Really Add People And Expect To Get More Done, Because Their Ability To Understand The Program And What's Going On It Would Require So Much Investment And All Their Work Would Require So Much Review That You'd Be More Likely To Slow Things Down.

Nobody Believes In Completely Unadulterated Capitalism.

Intellectual Property Has The Shelf Life Of A Banana.

Now You Have To Be A Collaborator And You Have To Bring On Governments And Convince People.

Climate Change Is A Terrible Problem, And It Absolutely Needs To Be Solved. It Deserves To Be A Huge Priority.

3d Is A Way Of Organizing Things, Particularly As We're Getting Much More Media Information On The Computer, A Lot More Choices, A Lot More Navigation Than We've Ever Had Before.

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

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

I Think Any Statement About Stock Prices Is Always Suspect Unless It's Made By Warren Buffett.

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.

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

Microsoft Was Founded With A Vision Of A Computer On Every Desk, And In Every Home. We've Never Wavered From That Vision.

Historically, Privacy Was Almost Implicit, Because It Was Hard To Find And Gather Information. But In The Digital World, Whether It's Digital Cameras Or Satellites Or Just What You Click On, We Need To Have More Explicit Rules - Not Just For Governments But For Private Companies.

You're Never Going To Get The Amount Of Co2 Emitted To Go Down Unless You Deal With The One Magic Metric, Which Is Co2 Per Kilowatt-hour.

Software Is More Important Than Hardware.

The First Rule Of Any Technology Used In A Business Is That Automation Applied To An Efficient Operation Will Magnify The Efficiency. The Second Is That Automation Applied To An Inefficient Operation Will Magnify The Inefficiency.

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.

Having Kids Has Been A Fantastic Thing For Me. It's Meant That I'm A Little More Balanced. In My Twenties I Worked Massively, Hardly Took Vacation At All. Now, I, With The Help Of My Wife, I'm Always Making Sure I've Got A Good Balance Of How I Spend My Time.

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 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.

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

I Definitely Think Leaving Kids Massive Amounts Of Money Is Not A Favor To Them.

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm Certainly Well Taken Care Of In Terms Of Food And Clothes ... Money Has No Utility To Me Beyond A Certain Point. Its Utility Is Entirely In Building An Organization And Getting The Resources Out To The Poorest In The World.

Taxes Are An Investment In America.

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.

And Knowledge Management Is A Means, Not An End.

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.

Thanks To Quality Education, Israel Is One Of The Most Advanced Countries In The World .. Israel Is Advancing In High-tech Even More Than Other Developed Countries.

Energy Is Very Primal Stuff And There Are A Lot Of Leads That Are Promising, Still At A Fairly Risky Stage, But Over The Next Decade Some Of These Breakthrough Approaches Are Going To Pay Out, And U.s. Research And U.s. Leadership On This Should Be Part Of How It Gets Solved.

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

You’ve Got To Give Great Tools To Small Teams. Pick Good People, Use Small Teams And Give Them Great Tools So That They Are Very Productive In Terms Of What They Are Doing.

Music, Even With These Dial-up Connections You Have To The Internet, Is Very Practical To Download.

In Almost Every Job Now, People Use Software And Work With Information To Enable Their Organization To Operate More Effectively.

R&d Generally Has Been A Bipartisan Thing, Because In The It Space, In The Medical Space, The U.s., The Benefits To Ourselves And The World And Our Economy Have Been Very, Very Clear. I'm Hopeful We Can Make A Very Strong Case There. Energy Is Actually Harder; It Takes More Time To Get A Product, But If You Do It's A Very, Very Big Market And The Constraints Of Doing That In A Clean Way Are More Obvious All The Time.

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

If You've Found Some Way To Educate Yourself About Engineering, Stocks, Or Whatever It Is, Good Employers Will Have Some Type Of Exam Or Interview And See A Sample Of Your Work.

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

If You Believe That All Men Are Created Equal, Then A Child's Death In Some Other Country Is No Less Tragic Than In The United States.

The Pc Has Improved The World In Just About Every Area You Can Think Of. Amazing Developments In Communications, Collaboration And Efficiencies. New Kinds Of Entertainment And Social Media. Access To Information And The Ability To Give A Voice People Who Would Never Have Been Heard.

Digital Reading Will Completely Take Over. It's Lightweight And It's Fantastic For Sharing. Over Time It Will Take Over.

Like Almost Everyone Who Uses E-mail, I Receive A Ton Of Spam Every Day. Much Of It Offers To Help Me Get Out Of Debt Or Get Rich Quick. It Would Be Funny If It Weren't So Irritating.

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

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.

Almost Every Way We Make Electricity Today, Except For The Emerging Renewables And Nuclear, Puts Out Co2. And So, What We're Going To Have To Do At A Global Scale, Is Create A New System. And So, We Need Energy Miracles.

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

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.

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

Bitcoin Is Mostly About Anonymous Transactions, And I Don't Think Over Time That's A Good Way To Go. I'm A Huge Believe In Digital Currency... But Doing It On An Anonymous Basis I Think That Leads To Some Abuses, So I'm Not Involved In Bitcoin.

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.

Whether You Believe It A Moral Imperative Or In The Rich World's Enlightened Self-interest, Securing The Conditions That Will Lead To A Healthy, Prosperous Future For Everyone Is A Goal I Believe We All Share.

Prosperous Future

I Remember In 1980 Or 1981 Looking At A List Of People Who Had Made A Lot Of Money In The Computer Industry And Thinking, Wow, That's Amazing. But I Never Thought I'd Be On That List. It's Clear I Was Wrong. I'm On The List, At Least Temporarily.

Programs Today Get Very Fat; The Enhancements Tend To Slow The Program Down Because People Put In Special Checks. When They Want To Add Some Feature, They’ll Just Stick In These Checks Without Thinking About How They Might Slow The Thing Down.

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

Google's Done A Super Good Job On Search; Apple's Done A Great Job On The Ipod.

About Three Million Computers Get Sold Every Year In China, People Don't Pay For The Software. Someday They Will, Though. And As Long As They're Going To Steal It, We Want Them To Steal Ours. They'll Get Sort Of Addicted, And Then We'll Somehow Figure Out How To Collect Sometime In The Next Decade.

Unfortunately, In Rich-world Health, Innovation Is Both Your Friend And Your Enemy. Innovation Is Inventing Organ Replacement, Joint Replacement. We're Inventing Ways Of Doing New Things That Cost $300,000 And Take People In Their 70s And, On Average, Give Them An Extra, Say, Two Or Three Years Of Life. And Then You Have To Say, Given Finite Resources, Should We Fire Two Or Three Teachers To Do This Operation?

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.

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.

Exposure To The Reproductions [of Corbis-owned Fine Art Photographs] Is Likely To Increase Rather Than Diminish Reverence For The Real Art And Encourage More People To Get Out To Museums And Galleries.

It Is My Belief That Industry And Government Around The World Should Work Even More Closely To Protect The Privacy And Security Of Internet Users, And Promote The Exchange Of Ideas, While Respecting Legitimate Government Considerations.

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.

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.

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

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

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

When Aids Emergency Broke Out And Was Killing Millions In Africa, The Global Fund Was Created So That A Level Of Generosity Would Show Up And Buy The Medicines To Save Those Lives.

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

When I Was Growing Up, My Parents Were Almost Involved In Various Volunteer Things. My Dad Was Head Of Planned Parenthood. And It Was Very Controversial To Be Involved With That.

I 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.

The Spread Of Online Information Isn't Just Good For Charities. It's Also Good For Donors. You Can Go To A Site Like Charity Navigator, Which Evaluates Nonprofits On Their Financial Health As Well As The Amount Of Information They Share About Their Work.

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.

The Most Straightforward Path Would Be If We Could Bring The Cost Of Solar Electric And Wind Down By Another Factor Of Say, Three, And Then Have Some Miraculous Storage Solution, So That Not Only Over The 24-hour Day But Over Long Periods Of Time Where The Wind Doesn't Blow, You Have Reliable Energy. That's A Path. But Energy Storage Is Hard. That's Not A Guaranteed Path.

We Weren't Trying To Just Go Public And Get Rich. There Was No Near-term Thing. It Always Was This Many-decades Thing Where There Were No Shortcuts And We'd Sort Of Put One Foot In Front Of The Other.

I Have An Excellent Memory, A Most Excellent Memory.

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

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.

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.

People Are Building The Software And So Having The Pieces Be Such That A Single Person Understands All The Tradeoffs And Everything That's Going On In A Piece Is Extremely Valuable. It Avoids Getting Into An Experimental Mode Where You're Just Trying Things Out. That Never Works.

One Thing I've Always Loved About The Culture At Microsoft Is There Is Nobody Who Is Tougher On Us, In Terms Of What We Need To Learn And Do Better, Than The People In The Company Itself. You Can Walk Down These Halls, And They'll Tell You, 'we Need To Do Usability Better, Push This Or That Frontier.'

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.

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.

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.

There Are More People Dying Of Malaria Than Any Specific Cancer.

We're Changing The World With Technology.

Changing The World

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

It Is Really Gratifying, For Example, To Visit India Now And See That Because They've Had Good Educational Institutions, And They've Had A Focus On It, There Are More And More People In India Participating In The World Economy.

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

If Africa Seeks Prosperity, It Must Provide For The Health And Nutrition Of All – Including The Poorest.

If You Think Of Global Public Goods Like Polio Eradication, The Kind Of Risk-taking New Approach, Philanthropy Really Does Have A Role To Play There, Because Government Doesn't Do R&d About New Things Naturally As Much As It Probably Should, And So Philanthropy's There.

My Parents Are Very Successful, And I Went To The Nicest Private School In The Seattle Area. I Was Lucky. But I Never Had Any Trust Funds Of Any Kind, Though My Dad Did Pay My Tuition At Harvard, Which Was Quite Expensive.

With World Health, Every Life You Save Is A Wonderful Thing, So It's Not This Question Of Whether You Solve It Or You Don't. The Chance Of Completely Solving The Problems Has Long Odds. But Really, The Thing Is That You Get To Save The First Child, The Second Child, The Third Child. You Can Just Feel Good About That.

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

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

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

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 Your Culture Doesn't Like Geeks, You Are In Real Trouble.

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

Don’t Tax My Income, Tax My Consumption.

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

There's A Unique Thing About The Uk, Where You Give A Very Generous Foreign Aid Budget To Support Globally, Which Is Spent Wisely. We Partner With The Government Here To Make Sure That That Money Is Spent Well.

Software Is A Great Combination Between Artistry And Engineering. When You Finally Get Done And Get To Appreciate What You Have Done It Is Like A Part Of Yourself That You've Put Together. I Think A Lot Of The People Here Feel That Way.

I Know There's A Farmer Out There Somewhere Who Never Wants A Pc And That's Fine With Me.

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

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.

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

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

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

Unfortunately, The Highly Curious Student Is A Small Percentage Of The Kids.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I've Been Studying How Quickly We Can Get Energy Out To The Poor Countries - A Lot Of Which Are In Africa - And How Little Progress We've Made There. There's No More Electricity Today In Sub-saharan Africa Per Person Than There Was 20 Years Ago.

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

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.

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

The Moral Systems Of Religion, I Think, Are Super Important.

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.

Death Is Something We Really Understand Extremely Well.

Well I Think Any Author Or Musician Is Anxious To Have Legitimate Sales Of Their Products, Partly So They're Rewarded For Their Success, Partly So They Can Go On And Do New Things.

The Vision Is That People Should Have The Ultimate In Convenience. Being Able To Get The Things They Care About On The Appropriate Device.

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

President [george] Bush Made The U.s. Absolutely The Leader, Between Its Own Pepfar, And It's Been By Far The Biggest Global Fund Donor. That's A Legacy.

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

I Didn't Completed My University Education

University Education

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

The 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.

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

Human Condition

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

By 2018, An Estimated 63 Percent Of All New U.s. Jobs Will Require Workers With An Education Beyond High School. For Our Young People To Get Those Jobs, They First Need To Graduate From High School Ready To Start A Postsecondary Education.

The First Five Years Have So Much To Do With How The Next 80 Turn Out.

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

The Idea That You Encourage Companies To Take Their Innovative Thinkers And Think About The Most Needy - Even Beyond The Market Opportunities - That's Something That Appropriately Ought To Be Done.

I Mean, If We Said Right Now, There's Somebody In The Next Room Who's Dying, Let's All Go Save Their Life, You Know, Everybody Would Just Get Up Immediately And Go Get Involved In That.

The Phenomenal Generosity Of The United States In Its Aid Budget Towards Health Issues Is The Best In The World. You Can Look At That Broadly, You Can Look At It In Terms Of Hiv, The Pepfar Money Which Came Together In A Republican Administration With Bipartisan Support.

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.

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

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.

Philanthropy Is Fun And Fulfilling.

Vision Without Execution Is Daydreaming.

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.

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

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

When The Pc Was Launched, People Knew It Was Important.

Anything That Someone's Interested In Should Be Very, Very Easy To Call Up Onto The Screen. And In Fact The Computer Over Time Will See What You're Interested In And Make That Immediately Available Without Your Having To Be Give Any Commands At All.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Terms Of Doing Things I Take A Fairly Scientific Approach To Why Things Happen And How They Happen. I Don't Know If There's A God Or Not, But I Think Religious Principles Are Quite Valid.

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.

Leaders Are Those Who Empower Others.

Don't Let Yourself Be Lulled Into Inaction.

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

Life Is Not A Continuous Process, There's Some Sort Of Finite Number Of Achievements That Defines Your Life.

You Can Be A Business Thinker.

A Bad Strategy Will Fail No Matter How Good Your Information Is. And Lame Execution Will Stymie A Good Strategy. If You Do Enough Things Poorly, You'll Go Out Of Business.

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

Until We're Educating Every Kid In A Fantastic Way, Until Every Inner City Is Cleaned Up, There Is No Shortage Of Things To Do.

My Broad Sense Of This Is That Authors Like Smil Really Paint The Clear Picture, And Once You See That, It's Kind Of Oh, Of Course. That's Such A Primal Thing To All These Physical Services That We Take For Granted.

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.

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