Bill Gates quotes

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

Eventually we'll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system.

We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.

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.

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm - not all - that religion used to fill.

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.

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

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.

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.

Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

The future of advertising is the Internet.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

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.

Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

I've always been interested in science - one of my favourite books is James Watson's 'Molecular Biology of the Gene.'

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.

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don't want to get malaria.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm - not all - that religion used to fill.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.

The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.

Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn't willing to.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it's true.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.

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.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It's not a popular position.

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.

I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence.

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.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

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.

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.

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.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That's quite clear.

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

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.

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.

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.

There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it's extremely hard to block anything - extremely hard. You'll never get perfect blocking.

Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

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.

What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life.

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.

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance... you thrive on that.

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Money has always been in politics. And I'm not sure you'd want money to be completely out of politics.

The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world.

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn't been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A's without taking a book home. I didn't go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

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.

My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.

If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.

There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

The best teacher is very interactive.

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.

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn't cool.

Digital technology has several features that can make it much easier for teachers to pay special attention to all their students.

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.

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes 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.

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.

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.

This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing.

It's hard to improve public education - that's clear.

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.

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.

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

The 'Billionaire' song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It's funny.

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.

I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!

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.

There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.

For a highly motivated learner, it's not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you're a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.

Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.

The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.

We've got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.

The typical project design time for a large company like IBM - and they keep track of this - is a little over four years.

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

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.