In most of these things our foundation is a co-funder, so I can say that a polio or an HIV vaccine, that I'm putting our resources behind it in a very big way and the U.S. government would be the best partner for those efforts.

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.

When you are failing, you are forced to be creative, to dig deep and think, night and day.

It was really phenomenal [Warren Buffett donation]. It grew out of the friendship that we had and the fact that his plan to have his wife run the foundation and give things away changed when she tragically died.

My broad sense of this is that authors like Smil really paint the clear picture, and once you see that, it's kind of Oh, of course. That's such a primal thing to all these physical services that we take for granted.

Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put three man-years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product, and distributing it for free?

You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There's another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.