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Bill Gates Quotes

Co-Founder of Microssoft
Born On
1955-10-28
Birth Place
Seattle
Birth Sign
scorpio
Father
William H. Gates Sr.
Mother
Mary Maxwell Gates
Spouse
Melinda Gates (m. 1994; div. 2021)
Nationality
American
Education
1973 - Lakeside School, 1975 - Harvard College

We all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve.

Bill Gates

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.

Bill Gates

I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.

Bill Gates

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

Bill Gates

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

Bill Gates

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Bill Gates

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Bill Gates

If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.

Bill Gates

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

Bill Gates

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

Bill Gates

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

Bill Gates

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I'm still fanatical, but now I'm a little less fanatical.

Bill Gates

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

Bill Gates

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.

Bill Gates

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

Bill Gates

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

Bill Gates

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life.

Bill Gates

In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you're going to be 20 years from now is how well you're doing in your education system.

Bill Gates

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

Bill Gates

Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.

Bill Gates

There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft.

Bill Gates

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

Bill Gates

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

Bill Gates

Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don't think over time that's a good way to go. I'm a huge believe in digital currency... but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I'm not involved in Bitcoin.

Bill Gates

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines... There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

Bill Gates

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers - organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative - if we don't solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

Bill Gates

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

Bill Gates

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

Bill Gates

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Bill Gates

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

Bill Gates

Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

Bill Gates

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Bill Gates

In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.

Bill Gates

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies.

Bill Gates

Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.

Bill Gates

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

Bill Gates

If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?

Bill Gates

We've got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.

Bill Gates

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

Bill Gates

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.

Bill Gates

The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.

Bill Gates

I spend a lot of time reading.

Bill Gates

Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it's about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton. It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.

Bill Gates

I am results-oriented.

Bill Gates

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

Bill Gates

Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.

Bill Gates

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

Bill Gates

Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It's fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.

Bill Gates

By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited... The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.

Bill Gates

Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.

Bill Gates

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

Bill Gates

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

Bill Gates

Digital technology has several features that can make it much easier for teachers to pay special attention to all their students.

Bill Gates

OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me 'Trey' because I'm William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I'm also known.

Bill Gates

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.

Bill Gates

I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.

Bill Gates

The future of advertising is the Internet.

Bill Gates

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

Bill Gates

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it 'tap-dancing to work.'

Bill Gates

Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.

Bill Gates

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right.

Bill Gates

I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!

Bill Gates

Innovations 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 Gates

I don't think there's a... boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.

Bill Gates

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

Bill Gates

Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you're good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.

Bill Gates

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

Bill Gates

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

Bill Gates

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance... you thrive on that.

Bill Gates

Steve Jobs' ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

Bill Gates

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

Bill Gates

On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.

Bill Gates

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it's true.

Bill Gates

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn't been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A's without taking a book home. I didn't go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

Bill Gates

It's the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change - as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

Bill Gates

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful.

Bill Gates

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you're glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

Bill Gates

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don't want a legacy.

Bill Gates

Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.

Bill Gates

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

Bill Gates

Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles.

Bill Gates

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.

Bill Gates

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

Bill Gates

The best teacher is very interactive.

Bill Gates

Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.

Bill Gates

If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was 'satisfactory,' I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?

Bill Gates

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting.

Bill Gates

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it's really let us down.

Bill Gates

Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.

Bill Gates

I'm an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.

Bill Gates

I know there's a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that's fine with me.

Bill Gates

One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn't elect those people. Isn't it supposed to be different? Aren't we supposed to like the people that we elected?

Bill Gates

If you've found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

Bill Gates

There's no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.

Bill Gates

There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it's extremely hard to block anything - extremely hard. You'll never get perfect blocking.

Bill Gates

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It's not a popular position.

Bill Gates

You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There's another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.

Bill Gates

Although I don't have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

Bill Gates

Digital reading will completely take over. It's lightweight and it's fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.

Bill Gates

In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can't you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that's different from a California textbook that's different from a Massachusetts textbook. That's very expensive.

Bill Gates