If you want to build a great company, get the hell out of Silicon Valley.

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

During the past two centuries, innovation has more than doubled our life span and given us cheap energy and more food. If we project what the world will be like 10 years from now without continuing innovation in health, energy or food, the picture is dark.

I was announcing to the public, in 2006, that I'd be leaving Microsoft in a couple of years and focusing full-time on the foundation. That was the time at which we went back to New York and Warren [Buffett] announced these gifts to a number of foundations, with a very high percentage of it going to us and basically doubling our capacity.

Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more 'user-friendly'... Their best approach so far has been to take all the old brochures and stamp the words 'user-friendly' on the cover.

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

The information highway will transform our culture as dramatically as Gutenberg's press did the Middle Ages.