50 Life Changing Quotes From Bill Gates

1. It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
2. Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
3. Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
4. If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.
5. What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life.
6. 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.
7. The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.
8. We all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve.
9. The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
10. 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.
11. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
12. 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.
13. Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.
14. 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.
15. Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.
16. If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.
17. 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.
18. Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
19. Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
20. Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.
21. 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.
22. As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance... you thrive on that.
26. 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.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
30. Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.
31. Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.
32. 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.
33. If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.
34. Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.
35. If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.
36. 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.'
37. 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.
38. Contrary to popular belief, I don't spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I've learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that's what kids are playing. That's what people are talking about.
39. 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.
40. Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.
41. The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam - those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that's legitimate.
42. 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.
43. The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life.
44. Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.
48. There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.
49. For Africa to move forward, you've really got to get rid of malaria.
50. I have a nice office. I have a nice house... So I'm not denying myself some great things. I just don't happen to have expensive hobbies.