I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.
The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.
Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.
Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until ever inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.
If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.
I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, ‘Yes, my country is doing well,’ but you think about the world at large.
If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?
There is a certain responsibility that accrued to me when I got to this unexpected position.
You see, antiquated ideas of kindness and generosity are simply bugs that must be programmed out of our world. And these cold, unfeeling machines show us the way.
The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.
I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.
I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.
Who decides what’s in Windows? The customers who buy it.
In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.
Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.
We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.