I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

So we do software for watches, for phones, for TV sets, for cars. And some of these take a long time to catch on.

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.

If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.

Rules broken today become norms tomorrow.

The death of a child is an incredible tragedy all over the world. Back in 1990, about 12 percent of children were dying before they reached the age of 5.

Personally, I'd like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.