Bill Gates quotes:

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events - Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima - so it's more visible.

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.

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

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

Software 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.

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.

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.

In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there's such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

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!

There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

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 think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it's just such a dramatic success.

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

Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.

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.

When Ford sells a car, a dealer isn't allowed to take out the engine and put a different one in. When a newsstand sells the Washington Post, no one can go to the newsstand and pay them to rip out the classified section and put their own classified section in - if they could, they would do so.

Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they're rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That's quite clear.

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he's got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

Our teachers deserve better feedback.

If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn't be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.

I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there's a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with 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.

The tool that's most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.

Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad - really, really bad. I'd say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government's name.

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it's aid-neutral.

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm - not all - that religion used to fill.

The potential financial reward for building the 'next Windows' is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.

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.

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.

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn't want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that's a good discussion. Maybe that's the way to help close the deficit.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn't that complicated. I wouldn't want to put it on my business card.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

The truth of Moore's law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

To create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit different; it takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

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.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

What destroys more self-confidence than any other educational thing in America is being assigned to some remedial math when you get into some college, and then it's not taught very well and you end up with this sense of, 'Hey, I can't really figure those things out.'

People are always coming up to me and saying, 'I heard your dad's speech, and it's really great.' And they'll mention some place I didn't even know my dad was going to.

The 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.

If you're using first-class land for biofuels, then you're competing with the growing of food. And so you're actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.

Google's done a super good job on search; Apple's done a great job on the IPod.

Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass - the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that - so they're kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not.

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.

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

The nuclear approach I'm involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There's a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true - many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

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.

Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

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.

We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.

When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen.

Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don't approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides.

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.

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

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?

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

The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.

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

The Green Revolution focused on the big three - maize, rice and wheat - and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have.

Being flooded with information doesn't mean we have the right information or that we're in touch with the right people.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn't been the case for teaching.

Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.

Newspaper readership is still growing in India.

India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has.

There 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.

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

Being able to see an activity log of where a kid has been going on the Internet is a good thing.

The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

The U.S. couldn't even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They'll be killing each other again in less than a year. I'm sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.

My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we've had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.

There's always been a lot of information about your activities. Every phone number you dial, every credit-card charge you make. It's long since passed that a typical person doesn't leave footprints.

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.

Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it.

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.

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That's not possible on $1 a day.

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

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.

Certainly there's a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.

Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it's taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, 'Let's get out the camera and get that shot.' You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that's safer, doesn't require us to go around the world to get all our oil.

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

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

There certainly is a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive.

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

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.

By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.

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.

It's OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don't want them to catch up because we're slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity - the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

The spread of online information isn't just good for charities. It's also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.

The 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.

There's 20 companies that I have investments in - some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure.

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

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

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.

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.

Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.