Bill Gates Quotes

“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.”

“Playing bridge is a pretty old fashioned thing in a way that I really like.”

“My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.”

“President [George] Bush made the U.S. absolutely the leader, between its own PEPFAR, and it's been by far the biggest Global Fund donor. That's a legacy.”

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

“If something's 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?”

“I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.”

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

“Over 80% of the poor are people who have small plots of land and grow their own food and they don't grow enough to sell much into the marketplace. So they will be hit hard by the worst in climate. They really get hit hard starting in the 20-year time frame and thereafter.”

“Should there be cameras everywhere in outdoor streets? My personal view is having cameras in inner cities is a very good thing. In the case of London, petty crime has gone down. They catch terrorists because of it. And if something really bad happens, most of the time you can figure out who did it.”

“The quality of research in the U.S. is absolutely the best.”

“There's a true schizophrenia where if you say to voters, you know, do you think the federal government spends too much money and they should spend less, they say yeah, absolutely. Then you name specific things, like Pell grants for students and they say, no, not that. How 'bout NIH, medical research funding? Nah, you really shouldn't cut that. And pretty soon you've proved that what the American public is against is arithmetic.”

“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.”

“I'm not a macroeconomics person.”

“Playing Bridge is a pretty old fashioned thing in a way that I really like... I do the dishes every night - other people volunteer but I like the way I do it.”

“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.”

“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.'”

“In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.”

“Customer service will become the primary value added function of every business.”

“Our work in global health is about things like cutting childhood deaths, and every year we continue to make progress there.”

“Microsoft has long hired based on IQ and "intellectual bandwidth."”

“If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.”

“The future of advertising is the Internet.”

“The machines need to get faster. They need to get cheaper.”