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.
There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.
I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.
If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.
Most poor people live in the poorest countries.
The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.
Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.
There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.
It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.
Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.
The fight against AIDS in China is already well underway. The Chinese government and other funders are providing major support, and they’ll continue to bear primary responsibility for delivering prevention and treatment.
Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.
Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.
It’s hard to improve public education – that’s clear.
The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.
In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.
There are GMO skeptics more in Europe maybe than in other places, but not exclusively.
The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.
I didn’t used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.
Philanthropy should be voluntary.
I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.
The Green Revolution focused on the big three – maize, rice and wheat – and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have.
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.
For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.
U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.
The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it’s very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk.
I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it’s just such a dramatic success.
Given how few young people actually read the newspaper, it’s a good thing they’ll be reading a newspaper on a screen.
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.
The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.
If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.
Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.
Eventually, all companies are replaced.
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.
If I hadn’t given my money away, I’d have had more than anyone else on the planet.
Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you’re good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.
The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.
Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.
