I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

It's the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change - as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

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

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

I would counsel people to go to college, because it's one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.

“Life is not fair — get used to it!”

“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

“To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.”

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

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

Life is not fair, get used to it.

We start life with many big dreams–things we want to accomplish, create, build and experience. But if you ask anyone past the age of 40 what happened to all the dreams they had, they will most likely answer; Life.

Life has a tendency to just happen. But it happens because we make choices. The life you create and design for yourself is going to accumulate from the choices you make over time. Sure, there are unexpected things that can derail dreams. But we can control where we put our focus, and if we choose to put one dream ahead of another.

Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

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.

Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education. 

The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: 'Does your teacher use class time well?' and, 'When you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?'

In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.

I don't think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that's associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.

When you revolutionize education, you're taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you're priming the pump for so many incredible things.

Our teachers deserve better feedback

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

I've always been interested in science - one of my favourite books is James Watson's 'Molecular Biology of the Gene.'

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.

Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.

The bulk of the universities are about teaching kids

The best teacher is very interactive.

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

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

It's hard to improve public education - that's clear.

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.

Common Core is a big win for education.

In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you're going to be 20 years from now is how well you're doing in your education system.

In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you're going to be 20 years from now is how well you're doing in your education system.

Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.

By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.

In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

Digital reading will completely take over. It's lightweight and it's fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.

Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they're not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.

I spend a lot of time reading.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

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.

The only definition by which America's best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.

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.