Words matter. These are the best Bill Gates Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.
In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.
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.
If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.
The 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.
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has.
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.
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.
In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you’re going to be 20 years from now is how well you’re doing in your education system.
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.
Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.
I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.
Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.
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.
In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn’t been the case for teaching.
People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.
You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.
In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?
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.
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 think any statement about stock prices is always suspect unless it’s made by Warren Buffett.
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen.
I meet people overseas that know five languages – that the only language I’m comfortable in is English.
Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education.
Middle-income countries are the biggest users of GMOs. Places like Brazil.
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.
The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.
Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.
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.
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%.
Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.
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.
You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.
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.
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.
Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.
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.
In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.
I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.
Common Core is a big win for education.
SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it’s very inexpensive to send mail.
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.
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.
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.
My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.
Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.
I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.
No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.
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.
The best teacher is very interactive.
I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.
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.
There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.
The year I was born, 1955, the first big disease-eradication program in the world was declared for malaria. After about a decade of work, they realized that, at least in the tropical areas, they did not have the tools to get it done.
Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.
Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
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 exciting.
My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.
Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.
