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Bill Gates Quotes
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William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, author, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation along with Paul Allen.

In 1975, Gates and Allen launched Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000, but he remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. Later in his career, Gates pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors. He donated large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was established in 2000.

Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people. As of September 2017, he is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$84.8 billion. In 2009, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. The foundation works to save lives and improve global health, and is working with Rotary International to eliminate polio.

✵ 28. October 1955
Bill Gates photo
Bill Gates: 92   quotes 37   likes

Bill Gates Quotes

“Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time.”

Bill Gates

BBC News (24 January 2004) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3426367.stm
2000s

Time , Past

“Life is not fair. Get used to it… Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.”

Bill Gates

Though widely attributed to Gates on the internet, this list of life suggestions is actually based on one from Charles J. Sykes. More information at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.htm
Misattributed

Life , Chance

“Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It’s a good thing we have museums to document that.”

Bill Gates

Speech at the Computer History Museum, as quoted in InfoWorld magazine (October 2001) http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/01/HNgatestalksmuseum_1.html
2000s

Past

“I’d like to start by telling you about my wife Melinda’s Aunt Myra. We see her a few times a year. Aunt Myra worked for many years taking reservations for Delta Airlines. She lived in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina, and then she moved to Dallas, Melinda’s hometown. She loves to see our kids. When we all get together, she’ll sit down on the floor and play games with them. Aunt Myra also has polio. She’s in braces, and she has been ever since she was a little girl.”

Bill Gates

Regarding Bill And Melinda Gates' Polio Efforts (2009)

Love , Girl , Game , Time

“We don't have the user centricity. Until we understand context, which is way beyond presence — presence is the most trivial notion, just am I on this device or not; it doesn't say am I meeting with something, am I focused on writing something. i had to suck dicks this morning help me i gayyyyyy”

Bill Gates

.NET Briefing Day Speech (24 July 2002) http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2002/07-24netstrategy.asp
2000s

Way , Understanding

“Unfortunately, many programs are so big that there is no one individual who really knows all the pieces, and so the amount of code sharing you get isn't as great. Also, the opportunity to go back and really rewrite something isn't quite as great, because there's always a new set of features that you're adding on to the same program.”

Bill Gates

Source: Interview from Programmers at Work (1986)

“If something is expensive to develop, and somebody's not going to get paid, it won't get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?”

Bill Gates

Interview with Dennis Bathory-Kitsz in 80 Microcomputing (1980) http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/20/1316236&mode=thread Clips from the interview can be found on "No Money (Lullaby for Bill)" http://maltedmedia.com/books/papers/sf-gates.html by Dennis Báthory-Kitsz. http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/index.html
1980s

“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.… The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can.”

Bill Gates

" Challenges and Strategy http://web.archive.org/web/20010218085558/http://bralyn.net/etext/literature/bill.gates/challenges-strategy.txt" (16 May 1991). Note that this quotation has been paired with a misattributed quotation.
1990s

People , Idea

“We're no longer in the days where everything is super well crafted. But at the heart of the programs that make it to the top, you'll find that the key internal code was done by a few people who really know what they were doing.”

Bill Gates

Interview from Programmers at Work (1986)

People , Heart

“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”

Bill Gates

The Wall Street Journal (December 29, 2011).
Attributed

Business , Life

“This leads to the paradox, that because the disease is only in the poor countries, there is not much investment. For example, there is more money put into baldness drugs, than are put into malaria. Now, baldness, it is a terrible thing [audience laughter] and rich men are afflicted, so that is why that priority is set.”

Bill Gates

Video may be viewed here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppDWD3VwxVg.
TED, February (2009)

Men , Money , Disease , Laughter

“I'm a big believer that as much as possible, and there's obviously political limitations, freedom of migration is a good thing.”

Bill Gates

"Bill Gates backs immigration reform on Mexico trip" Reuters (21 March 2007) http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN2024750720070321
2000s

Freedom

“Let's burn the 99%.”

Bill Gates

TED, February 2010

“The success of the Nigeria programme hinges on the active participation of everyone to make sure that all children are reached by National Immunization Days (NIDs), Immunization Plus Days (IPDs) and the routine immunization programme, if the country capitalizes on the commitments I’ve heard in the past two days, Nigeria can lead the way to a polio-free Africa.”

Bill Gates

http://www.polioeradication.org/tabid/165/iid/30/Default.aspx "Bill Gates visits Nigeria" polioeradication.org (04 February 2009)
Regarding Bill And Melinda Gates' Polio Efforts (2009)

Country , Success , Past , Children

“Nothing is as good as meeting people who have to live with malaria or HIV or see their children die.”

Bill Gates

"Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aunv58/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/eh9gsvg (25 February 2019)
2000s

Children , People

“Any operating system without a browser is going to be fucking out of business. Should we improve our product, or go out of business?”

Bill Gates

"In Search of the Real Bill Gates," Time (20 October 2005)
2000s

Business

“[I]t's not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, "Oh my God, Microsoft didn't aim high enough."”

Bill Gates

It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, "Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it."
"Bill Gates Joins the iPad's Army of Critics. Steve Jobs Couldn't Care Less." CBS MoneyWatch (11 February 2010) http://cbsnews.com/news/bill-gates-joins-the-ipads-army-of-critics-steve-jobs-couldnt-care-less
2010s

God , Way , Feeling

“Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds.”

Bill Gates

on Twitter https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1250292126643941376?s=20, Apr 14, 2020
COVID-19 pandemic 2020

Health , World

“Most governments take advantage of their scientists and listen to them. They don't undermine them and attack them.”

Bill Gates

As quoted in "Bill Gates slams U.S. on Covid: Most governments listen to their scientists, not attack them" (14 October 2020) https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/14/bill-gates-slams-us-on-covid-most-governments-listen-to-scientists.html
2020s

“We always have to be serious about public health in a global sense and surveillance for "the next one", because we don't know where it will emerge.”

Bill Gates

Source: As quoted in "Coronavirus: Bill Gates describes what we did wrong, and how to do better" by Lisa M. Krieger, The Mercury News (21 October 2020)

Health , Sense

“You can make sure wind turbines can deal with the cold.”

Bill Gates

Source: " Bill Gates says Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's explanation for power outages is 'actually wrong https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-texas-gov-greg-abbott-power-outage-claims-climate-change-002303596.html" (February 17, 2021)