If I think something's a waste of time or inappropriate I don't wait to point it out. I say it right away. It's real time. So you might hear me say 'That's the dumbest idea I have ever heard' many times during a meeting. Bill Gates More Quotes by Bill Gates More Quotes From Bill Gates Philanthropy should be voluntary. Bill Gates philanthropy should success The most important 'speed' issue is often not technical but cultural. It's convincing everyone that the company's survival depends on everyone moving as fast as possible. Bill Gates issues survival moving I find golf very relaxing. It's a way to get away from work and get outside. It's a lot of fun, and once you get going it's almost kind of addictive. Bill Gates golf fun sports Taking a look back, one big reqret is, I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world. The appalling disparities of health and wealth and opportunity that condemned millions of people to the lives of despair. I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas and economics, and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences. But humanities greatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Bill Gates real opportunity ideas The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC. Bill Gates generations done interesting Most innovations, unfortunately, actually increase the net costs of the healthcare system. There's a few, particularly having to do with chronic diseases, that are an exception. If you could cure Alzheimer's, if you could avoid diabetes - those are gigantic in terms of saving money. But the incentive regime doesn't favor them. Bill Gates alzheimers innovation cost Someone in the society has to deal with the reality that there are finite resources and we're making trade-offs, and be explicit about that. When the car companies were found to have a memo that actually said, "This safety feature costs X and saved Y lives," the very existence of that memo was considered damning. Or when you made it reimbursable for a doctor to ask, "Do you want heroic care at the end-of-life," that was a death panel. No, it wasn't a death panel! It was asking somebody to make a decision. Bill Gates doctors safety reality The only big companies that succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does. Bill Gates obsolete succeed doe I don't think I would have spent time learning about the immune system if understanding vaccines weren't something I considered very important. Bill Gates vaccines understanding thinking The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world. Bill Gates malaria children years Any machine that can run a browser is not thin. The browser has to be the thickest application man has ever invented, and it's getting thicker faster than anything ever development by man. Bill Gates machines running men People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then. Bill Gates cds rip people The mainstream is always under attack. Bill Gates mainstream This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing. Bill Gates library phenomenon computer When I was in college, for the games of that era, I was as hard core as anyone was. I wouldn't say I outgrew it, but you always have to have a finite number of addictions. Bill Gates finite-number college games Software will get to be somewhat more mature, ah, but it will never be as predictable as most areas of engineering. Bill Gates engineering software mature If you think of global public goods like polio eradication, the kind of risk-taking new approach, philanthropy really does have a role to play there, because government doesn't do R&D about new things naturally as much as it probably should, and so philanthropy's there. Bill Gates government play thinking So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important. Bill Gates mother lying children 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 lucky dancing work The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low. Bill Gates all-time-low numbers people
