Bill Gates Quotes

“In my 20s, I worked very, very hard. I have a much more balanced life now.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The close relationships we form between researchers and product groups have already shown we can move the great ideas as they come along, without a schedule, into the products.”

“Good developers like seeing their products sell in large quantities. They enjoy the competition of doing a better job than the other company, especially if the other company has more people on the project and they're entrenched and people are saying that we don't have a chance of getting in there and... and doing well.”

“The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.”

“If success corrupts, I'm probably pretty corrupted by now.”

“Know your numbers' is a fundamental precept of business.”

“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.”

“I read an hour almost every night. It's part of falling asleep.”

“The most important people is to pick people who like to write software and who are good at... good developers like working with each other. And they... they reinforce each other's skills.”

“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.”

“My grade point average went from a 2.2 to a 4.0 over the summer. I wanted to get straight A's. I decided to get straight A's. I didn't want people to think I was dumb. And when you get straight A's once, its easier.”

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

“The microprocessor is a miracle.”

“Americans move more than 10 times over the course of a lifetime.”

“The US really has to get out in front. We are the biggest per person, by a substantial amount, greenhouse emitters, and we give the most foreign aid, not per person but in absolute.”

“The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.”

“If I had a dollar for every time someone made fun of me in high school-oh wait, I do!”

“Vision without execution is daydreaming.”

“I like my job because it involves learning. I like being around smart people who are trying to figure out new things. I like the fact that if people really try they can figure out how to invent things that actually have an impact.”

“A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.”

“Another trick in software is to avoid rewriting the software by using a piece that's already been written, so called component approach which the latest term for this in the most advanced form is what's called Object Oriented Programming.”

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

“Microsoft was founded with a vision of a computer on every desk, and in every home. We've never wavered from that vision.”