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You May Have Heard Of Black Friday And Cyber Monday. There's Another Day You Might Want To Know About: Giving Tuesday. The Idea Is Pretty Straightforward. On The Tuesday After Thanksgiving, Shoppers Take A Break From Their Gift-buying And Donate What They Can To Charity.

-Bill Gates

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You May Have Heard

Bill Gates

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You May Have Heard Of Black Friday And Cyber Monday. There's Another Day You Might Want To Know About: Giving Tuesday. The Idea Is Pretty Straightforward. On The Tuesday After Thanksgiving, Shoppers Take A Break From Their Gift-buying And Donate What They Can To Charity.

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More From Bill Gates

Look At The Clock When You Are Sitting Idle. But Never Look At The Clock When You Are Working.

The Belief That The World Is Getting Worse, That We Can't Solve Extreme Poverty And Disease, Isn't Just Mistaken. It Is Harmful.

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

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

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.

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

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

The Us Really Has To Get Out In Front. We Are The Biggest Per Person, By A Substantial Amount, Greenhouse Emitters, And We Give The Most Foreign Aid, Not Per Person But In Absolute.

In Terms Of Fast Food And Deep Understanding Of The Culture Of Fast Food, I'm Your Man.

Deep Understanding

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.

Personal Computing Today Is A Rich Ecosystem Encompassing Massive Pc-based Data Centers, Notebook And Tablet Pcs, Handheld Devices, And Smart Cell Phones. It Has Expanded From The Desktop And The Data Center To Wherever People Need It - At Their Desks, In A Meeting, On The Road Or Even In The Air.

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.

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

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

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

A First-generation Fortune Is The Most Likely To Be Given Away, But Once A Fortune Is Inherited It's Less Likely That A Very High Percentage Will Go Back To Society.

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

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.

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

Inspiration Starts Somewhere.

The Interview Process Tests Not What The Applicant Knows, But How Well They Can Process Tricky Questions: If You Wanted To Figure Out How Many Times On Average You Would Have To Flip The Pages Of The Manhattan Phone Book To Find A Specific Name, How Would You Approach The Problem? If A Spider Fell To The Bottom Of A 50-foot Well, And Each Day Climbed Up 3 Feet And Slipped Back 2, How Many Days Would It Take The Spider To Get Out Of The Well? .

People Who Say They Don't See The Acceleration Of Innovation Is A Wilful Blindness. We Are Innovation At A Wonderful Speed For The Basic Things We Think Everyone Should Get.

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.

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

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

Windows 95 Was A Nice Milestone.

Now Everyone Takes It For Granted That You Can Look Up Movie Reviews, Track Locations, And Order Stuff Online. I Wish There Was A Way We Could Take It Away From People For A Day So They Could Remember What It Was Like Without It.

The More You Learn, The More You Have A Framework That The Knowledge Fits Into.

The United States Has A Huge Budget Deficit So Taxes Are Going To Have To Go Up And I Certainly Agree They Should Go Up More On The Rich Than Everyone Else. That - That's Just Justice.

Sorghum Is Kind Of Unusual. It Can Go To Very High Heats, But It's Not As Productive In Most Environments As Maize Is.

Don't Let Complexity Stop You. Be Activists. Take On The Big Inequities. It Will Be One Of The Great Experiences Of Your Lives.

Success Is A Miserable Teacher. It Tempts Intelligent People To Believe They Cannot Lose. And It Is An Unreliable Guide To The Future.

China Has Many Successful Entrepreneurs And Business People. I Hope That More People Of Insight Will Put Their Talents To Work To Improve The Lives Of Poor People In China And Around The World, And Seek Solutions For Them.

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.

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

In The U.s., We Believe The Best Way To Improve Lives Is To Improve Public Education.

There Won't Be Anything We Won't Say To People To Try And Convince Them That Our Way Is The Way To Go.

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

Banking Is Necessary - Banks Are Not.

Change The Boundaries Of Business.

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

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.

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

If The 1980s Were About Quality And The 1990s Were About Reengineering, Then The 2000s Will Be About Velocity.

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

Our Current Expectations For What Our Students Should Learn In School Were Set ﬁfty Years Ago To Meet The Needs Of An Economy Based On Manufacturing And Agriculture. We Now Have An Economy Based On Knowledge And Technology.

You Have To Be Willing To See That Sometimes The Governments Of These Poor Countries Don't Come Through. You Have To Think About That As A Constraint. How Do You Help Them Be Better? How Do You Come Up With Things That Actually Work, Even In Those Tough Situations.

The Ability Of A Successful Company To Add Functionality To Its Product Has Long Been Upheld.

Even For The Diseases We Don't Focus On, Cancer, Heart Disease, You're Going To Be Way Better Off Being Sick 10 Years From Now Than Any Time In The Past.

I Was Lucky To Be Involved And Get To Contribute To Something That Was Important, Which Is Empowering People With Software.

The Tablet Is Not Mainstream. Reading Off The Screen Is Not Mainstream.

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

There Will Be Two Types Of Businesses In The Next 5 Years, Those That Are On The Internet, And Those That Are Out Of Business

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

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.

Windows 2000 Already Contains Features Such As The Human Discipline Component, Where The Pc Can Send An Electric Shock Through The Keyboard If The Human Does Something That Does Not Please Windows.

I Don't Generally Read A Lot Of Fiction.

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

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.

Capitalism Has Worked Very Well. Anyone Who Wants To Move To North Korea Is Welcome.

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.

Learning To Write Programs Stretches Your Mind, And Helps You Think Better, Creates A Way Of Thinking About Things That I Think Is Helpful In All Domains.

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

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

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

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.

Government Investment Unlocks A Huge Amount Of Private Sector Activity, But The Basic Research That We Put Into It Work That Led To The Internet And Lots Of Great Companies And Jobs, The Basic Work We Put Into The Health Care Sector, Where It's Over $30 Billion A Year In R&d That Led The Biotech And Pharma Jobs. And It Creates Jobs And It Creates New Technologies That Will Be Productized. But The Government Has To Prime The Pump Here. The Basic Ideas, As In Those Other Industries, Start With Government Investment.

What We're Really After Is Simply That People Acquire A Legal License For Windows For Each Computer They Own Before They Move On To Linux Or Sun Solaris Or Bsd Or Os/2 Or Whatever.

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

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

The Chinese Are Clearly Inculcating The Idea That Science Is Exciting And Important, And That's Why They, As A Whole-they're Graduating Four Times As Many Engineers As We Are, And That's Just Happened Over The Last 20 Years.

We Are Always Saying To Ourself.. We Have To Innovate. We Got To Come Up With That Breakthrough... We're Only Paid For Breakthroughs.

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

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

In Business, The Idea Of Measuring What You Are Doing, Picking The Measurements That Count Like Customer Satisfaction And Performance... You Thrive On That.

Well, It's Taken Time To Get This Going, But He Was Right. If You Give People A Chance To Associate Themselves With A Cause They Care About, While Buying A Great Product, They Will. That Was How The Red Campaign Was Born, Here In Davos.

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

Vision Without Execution Is Daydreaming.

Five Years From Now On The Web For Free You’ll Be Able To Find The Best Lectures In The World. It Will Be Better Than Any Single University.

I Would Counsel People To Go To College, Because It's One Of The Best Times In Your Life In Terms Of Who You Meet And Develop A Broad Set Of Intellectual Skills.

The General Idea Of The Rich Helping The Poor, I Think, Is Important.

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

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.

In Fact, Batteries Haven't Improved Over The Last 100 Years As Much As They Would Need To In Order To Make That Happen. So I'm Invested In A Lot Of Battery Companies - And There's A Lot That Exists I'm Not In. They're All Having A Tough Time Achieving It.

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

I've Been Very Lucky, And Therefore I Owe It To Try And Reduce The Inequity In The World. And That's Kind Of A Religious Belief. I Mean, It's At Least A Moral Belief.

According To Ethiopian Custom, Parents Wait To Name A Baby Because Children Often Die In The First Weeks Of Life.

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.

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.

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.

Typically, Your Corporate E-mail Account Is Not, Today, That Spam-targeted. It's More The Free E-mail Accounts That Are Spam-targeted.

The Uk Is A Very International Country.

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

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

To Create A New Standard It Takes Something That's Not Just A Little Bit Different. It Takes Something That's Really New And Really Captures People's Imagination. And The Macintosh, Of All The Machines I've Ever Seen, Is The Only One That Meets That Standard.

Only Through Focus Can You Do World-class Things, No Matter How Capable You Are.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

You Wish That You Could Move More Rapidly And You Have Setbacks. You Know, The Aids Epidemic Was A Huge Setback For Africa, And It's Only Through Generosity That We've Avoided That Just Completely Crippling An Entire Generation There.

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.

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

I Choose A Lazy Person To Do A Hard Job. Because A Lazy Person Will Find An Easy Way To Do It.

If Empathy Channels Our Optimism, We Will See The Empathy And The Diseases And The Poor School. We Will Answer With Our Innovations And We Will Surprise The Pessimists.

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

The Internet Will Help Achieve "friction Free Capitalism" By Putting Buyer And Seller In Direct Contact And Providing More Information To Both About Each Other.

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

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.

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.

See The Clock Only When You Have No Work.... Don't See The Clock When You Are Working.... Clock Is A Lock For Success

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

I Believe In Innovation And That The Way You Get Innovation Is You Fund Research And You Learn The Basic Facts.

I Think When Smallpox Was Eliminated, The Whole World Got Pretty Excited About That Because It’s Just Such A Dramatic Success.

My Mom Was On The United Way Group That Decides How To Allocate The Money And Looks At All The Different Charities And Makes The Very Hard Decisions About Where That Pool Of Funds Is Going To Go.

I Believe In Generous Aid Policies.

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

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.

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.

(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.

Taxes Are An Investment In America.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Even In Some Of Our Vaccine Areas, Like An Aids Vaccine, Things Have Taken Longer Than We Expected, But We Have The Pipeline Of Tools. The Biological Information That We Have That Gives Us Insights Is Fantastic.

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.

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.

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

In Some Ways, If You Make Mistakes With Your Own Money, You Don't Feel As Bad About It As If It Was Someone Else's.

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.

Everyone Knows About Black Friday And Cyber Monday. Now Help Me Spread The Word About Giving Tuesday!

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

Globalization Has Made Copper And Other Minerals More Valuable, And Ghana And Kenya Have Recently Discovered Mineral Resources.

The Gates Foundation Has Learned That Two Questions Can Predict How Much Kids Learn: 'does Your Teacher Use Class Time Well?' And, 'when You're Confused, Does Your Teacher Help You Get Straightened Out?'

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

I Considered Law And Math. My Dad Was A Lawyer. I Think Though I Would Have Ended Up In Physics If I Didn't End Up In Computer Science.

Paul And I, We Never Thought That We Would Make Much Money Out Of The Thing. We Just Loved Writing Software.

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

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

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.

Digital Technology Has Several Features That Can Make It Much Easier For Teachers To Pay Special Attention To All Their Students.

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.

(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.

I Went Public Too Soon. Stay Private As Long As You Can.

The U.s. Couldn't Even Get Rid Of Saddam Hussein. And We All Know That The Eu Is Just A Passing Fad. They'll Be Killing Each Other Again In Less Than A Year. I'm Sick To Death Of All These Fascist Lawsuits.

Killing Each Other

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.

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.

Information Technology And Business Are Becoming Inextricably Interwoven. I Don't Think Anybody Can Talk Meaningfully About One Without The Talking About The Other.

The Kids Are A Big Part Of My Schedule.

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

The Great Thing About A Computer Notebook Is That No Matter How Much You Stuff Into It, It Doesn't Get Bigger Or Heavier.

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

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

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

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

Here Are Economies Like China's Economy Where It's Less Than A Tenth [of A Percent] Today, Although It Is Growing, Is Quite Small, Because Of The Notion That The Government Takes Care Of Everything, And Europe And China, Philanthropy Has Not Been Nearly Of The Same Scale.

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.

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.

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.

I Didn't Used To Wear A Watch. Now I Have A Spot Watch, Which I Wear All The Time.

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 Believe That Every Life Is Valuable. That We Can Make Things Better. That Innovation Is The Key To A Bright Future. That We're Just Getting Started.

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

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.

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 Watched The Piles Of Feces Go Up The Conveyor Belt... They Made Their Way Through The Machine... A Few Minutes Later I Took A Long Taste Of The End Result: A Glass Of Delicious Drinking Water.

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.

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.

...one Of The Most Inventive Forms Of Creative Capitalism Involves Someone We All Know Very Well. A Few Years Ago, I Was Sitting In A Bar Here In Davos With Bono. Late At Night, After A Few Drinks, He Was On Fire, Talking About How We Could Get A Percentage Of Each Purchase From Civic-minded Companies To Help Change The World. He Kept Calling People, Waking Them Up, And Handing Me The Phone To Show Me The Interest.

People Always Fear Change. People Feared Electricity When It Was Invented, Didn't They?

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

Positive Thinking

Security Is, I Would Say, Our Top Priority Because For All The Exciting Things You Will Be Able To Do With Computers - Organizing Your Lives, Staying In Touch With People, Being Creative - If We Don't Solve These Security Problems, Then People Will Hold Back.

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

There's Nobody Getting Rich Writing Software That I Know Of.

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.

This Whole Phenomenon Of The Computer In A Library Is An Amazing Thing.

Take Agriculture, Where We Haven't Done Much, Or Sanitation; Saying, "okay, We Will Be Able To Make A Really Huge Effort There." It Really Energized The Foundation And Half Of What We've Gotten Done In This Last Decade Is Because Warren [buffett] Trusted Us.

When A Country Has The Skill And Self-confidence To Take Action Against Its Biggest Problems, It Makes Outsiders Eager To Be A Part Of It.

Self Confidence

We Were Young, But We Had Good Advice And Good Ideas And Lots Of Enthusiasm.

We Have To Find A Way To Make The Aspects Of Capitalism That Serve Wealthier People Serve Poorer People As Well.

Microsoft Is A Company That Manages Imagination.

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

A Lot Of The Things That Will Really Improve The World Fortunately Aren't Dependent On Washington Doing Something Different.

The Ideal Thing Would Be To Have A 100 Percent Effective Aids Vaccine. And To Have Broad Usage Of That Vaccine. That Would Literally Break The Epidemic.

The World Won't Care About Your Self-esteem. The World Will Expect You To Accomplish Something Before You Feel Good About Yourself.

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