Bill Gates

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

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

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

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

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.

Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.

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.

Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.

Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn't necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.

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.

If I hadn't given my money away, I'd have had more than anyone else on the planet.

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

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.

Whether I'm at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I'm looking forward to reading.

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

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful.

There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

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

Personally, I'd like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

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.

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

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

There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.

The future of advertising is the Internet.

U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.

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

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

It's possible - you can never know - that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's sure going well for me, I must admit.

Newspaper readership is still growing in India.

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.

Eventually we'll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system.

I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things.

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.

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.

In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can't you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that's different from a California textbook that's different from a Massachusetts textbook. That's very expensive.

Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.

OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me 'Trey' because I'm William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I'm also known.

Polio's pretty special because once you get an eradication, you no longer have to spend money on it; it's just there as a gift for the rest of time.

The most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest.

We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they'll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.

I'm certainly well taken care of in terms of food and clothes.

I do the dishes every night - other people volunteer, but I like the way I do it.

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 idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy - even beyond the market opportunities - that's something that appropriately ought to be done.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren't dependent on Washington doing something different.

I am results-oriented.

By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.