We're focused on providing innovations in software, driving the continuous improvement for a much better experience, and there's a lot going on here that speaks to this decade and what's going to happen in this decade. We can kind of sum it up in terms of saying, "Yes, you can."
Bill GatesSometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority.
Bill GatesThere is no doubt that as an economy grows in a great way like India has, that you have to step back and change your tax systems, because you start to get more disparities of wealth.
Bill GatesA company needs to have good business reflexes, to be able to marshal its forces in a crisis or in response to any unplanned event.
Bill GatesThe Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.
Bill GatesThe most important work I got a chance to be involved in, no matter what I do, is the personal computer... I even knew not to get married until later because I was so obsessed with it. That's my life's work.
Bill GatesInnovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.
Bill GatesThere won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go.
Bill GatesI keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
Bill GatesThe software is where the magic is. If you're going to have all this power be simple enough, appealing enough and cool enough, it's going to be because the software is right.
Bill GatesSoftware substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses ... it's progressing. ... Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set. ... 20 years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model.
Bill GatesIs the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we'd want to get involved.
Bill GatesGood stuff tends to happen gradually, whereas violence or catastrophes are deemed more newsworthy.
Bill GatesIt's easier to add things on to a PC than it's ever been before. It's one click, and boom, it comes down.
Bill GatesIn the decade ahead I can predict that we will provide over twice the productivity improvement that we provided in the '90s.
Bill GatesAt the end of the day, natural-gas peakers sit back there and get financed so that the Midwest corridor can have a huge [period] of four to five days of no wind. The peakers are running big time to make that up, because that is the swing piece that can always be turned on.
Bill GatesPeople are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.
Bill GatesThe belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful.
Bill GatesThe world today has 6.8 billion people...that's headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.
Bill GatesYou’ve got to give great tools to small teams. Pick good people, use small teams and give them great tools so that they are very productive in terms of what they are doing.
Bill GatesWhen I say "an energy miracle," I mean that there will be some form of energy whose 24 hour cost really is competitive with hydrocarbons given, say, 20 years of learning curve. You invent it, then you look at how much its costs go down over the next 20 years, that it really beats hydrocarbons.
Bill GatesWhen you develop software, the people who write the software, the developers are the key group but the testers also play an absolutely critical role. They're the ones who ah, write thousands and thousands of examples and make sure that it's going to work on all the different computers and printers and the different amounts of memory or networks that the software'11 be used in. That's a very hard job.
Bill GatesI'm quite worried about the fiscal imbalances that we've got and what that might mean in terms of financial crisis ahead.
Bill GatesAnalytical software enables you to shift human resources from rote data collection to value-added customer service and support where the human touch makes a profound difference.
Bill GatesThe government is there day in and day out, if you want all kids to have education, if you want to run courts, if you want to have an army, if you want to have roads, you've got to have the taxation system that funds everything that you expect.
Bill GatesI'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.
Bill GatesMy fascination is broadly with biology and the fact that our increased understanding of biology allows for breakthroughs in a broad set of diseases.
Bill GatesThe most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that's expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren't used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
Bill GatesI hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities...on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but your humanity.
Bill GatesUnemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education.
Bill GatesThere's a unique thing about the UK, where you give a very generous foreign aid budget to support globally, which is spent wisely. We partner with the government here to make sure that that money is spent well.
Bill GatesIf you give people tools, and they use their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
Bill GatesU.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.
Bill GatesFor 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.
Bill GatesThe Center for Disease Control started out as the malaria war control board based in Atlanta. Partly because the head of Coke had some people out to his plantation and they got infected with malaria, and partly cause all the military recruits were coming down and having a higher fatality rate from malaria while training than in the field.
Bill Gates