Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress.

If you withdraw the incredible focus on polio, it will spread back, and in poor countries you'll get something like 100,000 cases a year. So by being very intense and getting the cases down to zero, what you do is you avoid all the future cases.

Microsoft's philosophy is to 'do things better.' And Vista has given us lots of opportunity to do that.

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

People care a lot that the USA is well run, and people globally expect us to do things in upgrading science and more.

I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.” I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

Whenever there is hard work to be done, I assign it to the laziest man as he is sure to find an easy way of doing it. Be lazy, think crazy.