If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.

“I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think that a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot

“People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they.”

“Find yourself.”

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

“Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.”

“Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.”

I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important

I’m a geek

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

Life is not fair; get used to it.

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it's about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton. It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you're glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.