Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity - the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

You know, development sometimes is viewed as a project in which you give people things and nothing much happens, which is perfectly valid, but if you just focus on that, then you'd also have to say that venture capital is pretty stupid, too. Its hit rate is pathetic. But occasionally, you get successes, you fund a Google or something, and suddenly venture capital is vaunted as the most amazing field of all time. Our hit rate in development is better than theirs, but we should strive to make it better.

Software is different than other products um, partly because it's, it's not physical and, and partly because of its complexity. You can express in software millions of different cases and making sure that you handle all of them correctly is extremely difficult.

With world health, every life you save is a wonderful thing, so it's not this question of whether you solve it or you don't. The chance of completely solving the problems has long odds. But really, the thing is that you get to save the first child, the second child, the third child. You can just feel good about that.

Our leadership [in Microsoft ] has that - "hey, we are the best in certain ways," and so we get the best people. That any kind of positive dynamic is quite good, so I love what's going on there, it's fun.

The present and future of knowledge attainment and essential business skills.

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.