If we [the USA] don't innovate in education, it's literally going to mean less people get to go have that education at a time when more people are going to want it. We've got to put courses out on the Web, we've got to put interactive learning out on the Web.

The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I'll never be hands-on on anything except software.

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

There are several hundred people who stayed in the Ebola-affected countries and continued to do the work, put themselves at great risk because medical workers are the most likely to be infected because they're helping out when the person's health is deteriorating, including quite a bit of bleeding as they're getting very, very sick.

The next big invention that will change the way we live should be things like ways of generating energy like electricity.

Contraception really shouldn't be all that controversial because it's a tool a woman can use to delay her first birth until she's, say, 18 or 19 years old.

We're creating this alliance, GAVI, that has helped buy the vaccines that were in the rich world but not getting to the poor kids, getting a very cheap price and figuring out the cold chain, getting the delivery right, and then funding research for new vaccines. A lot of them are coming along. We've got a meningitis vaccine out, got that through large parts of Africa. That has been a huge success.