The returns from investing in poor people are just as great as the returns from investing in the business world... and have even more meaning

I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software.

Something like Windows is still an unbelievable asset but because the world is somewhat phone-centric, it's an asset that has to be managed very carefully to make sure that it's extended, and there are very interesting things that are being done with that.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.

If you think of global public goods like polio eradication, the kind of risk-taking new approach, philanthropy really does have a role to play there, because government doesn't do R&D about new things naturally as much as it probably should, and so philanthropy's there.

I regret being the richest man in the world because that position attracts undeserved publicity.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that's safer, doesn't require us to go around the world to get all our oil.