If something's expensive to develop, and somebody's not going to get paid, it won't get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?

You don't go to other books and take little pieces because although say a romantic scene may have been many times before all the details of who it is, where it is, are so intertwined in that text that it's easier to write it from scratch.

We believe unbelievable progress can be made, in both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them.

If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity.

When I was trying to figure out why lives have improved so much in the last 300 years, where we've gone from a third of kids dying before 5 to - by 1990 it was down to 10% - now it's down to 5%. And saying why, over all history, there were smart people, but that number didn't change. Average life span didn't change. What's magical about what's been deemed the Industrial Revolution? It's really energy intensity.

You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

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.