Contrary to popular belief, I don't spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I've learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that's what kids are playing. That's what people are talking about.

People are building the software and so having the pieces be such that a single person understands all the tradeoffs and everything that's going on in a piece is extremely valuable. It avoids getting into an experimental mode where you're just trying things out. That never works.

Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

For a highly motivated learner, it's not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you're a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

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.

Bill Gates' Success Factors for Microsoft 1. Long-term Approach 2. Passion for Products and Technology 3. Teamwork 4. Results 5. Customer Feedback 6. Individual Excellence

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It's basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it's wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.