Share-ready quotes from Bill Gates

“Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast, or a bridge player.”

“That’s nearly 600 pounds for every person in the country. And we’re not even the biggest consumers of the stuff—that would be China, which installed more concrete in the first 16 years of the 21st century than the United States did in the entire 20th century!”

“define the precise chemical composition of the concrete you can use.”

“According to the listing on the UNESCO website, “The gastronomic meal emphasizes togetherness, the pleasure of taste, and the balance between human beings and the products of nature.”

“It may sound as if I’m cherry-picking”

“Meanwhile, making steel and cement alone accounts for around 10 percent of all emissions. So the question “What’s your plan for cement?” is just a shorthand reminder that if you’re trying to come up with a comprehensive plan for climate change, you have to account for much more than electricity and cars.”

“Tip: Whenever you see some number of tons of greenhouse gases, convert it to a percentage of 51 billion, which is the world’s current yearly total emissions (in carbon dioxide equivalents).”

“It’s the main thing I do in my life. I read and I chew glasses. That’s my job.”

“Unless we move fast toward zero, bad things (and probably many of them) will happen well within most people’s lifetime, and very bad things will happen within a generation.”

“But we can’t solve a problem like climate change without an honest accounting of how much we need to do and what obstacles we need to overcome.”

“It may sound old-fashioned, but letters and phone calls to your elected officials can have a real impact.”

“How many people will be killed by COVID-19 versus by climate change?”

“Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a day - and overestimate what they can accomplish in a year.”

“There are two numbers you need to know about climate change. The first is 51 billion. The other is zero. Fifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year.”

“But I hope you’ll spend more time and energy supporting whatever you’re in favor of than opposing whatever you’re against.”

“The world uses more than 4 billion gallons every day. When you’re using any product at that kind of volume, you can’t simply stop overnight.”

“In my view, investing in public libraries is an investment in the nation's future”

“If you want to understand the kind of damage that climate change will inflict, look at COVID-19 and then imagine spreading the pain out over a much longer period of time.”

“In other words, by mid-century, climate change could be just as deadly as COVID-19, and by 2100 it could be five times as deadly.”

“Whatever other resources you may have, you can always use your voice and your vote to effect change.”

“In this business, by the time you realize you are in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless your running scared all the time, you're gone.”

“Remember that we need to find solutions for all five activities that emissions come from: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm.”

“Business is a money game with few rules and a lot of risk.”

“The point is that when we focus on all three things at once—technology, policies, and markets—we can encourage innovation, spark new companies, and get new products into the market fast.”

“I studied every thing but never topped.. But today the toppers of the best universities are my employees”

“Well, I went for a ride but I didn't find my car”

“To sum up: We need to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar.”

“Making things (cement, steel, plastic) 31% Plugging in (electricity) 27% Growing things (plants, animals) 19% Getting around (planes, trucks, cargo ships) 16% Keeping warm and cool (heating, cooling, refrigeration) 7%”

“There’s no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw. It’s like saying that as of 1932, cars didn’t have radios in them, so they should never have radios in them.”

“The cruel injustice is that even though the world’s poor are doing essentially nothing to cause climate change, they’re going to suffer the most from it.”

“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.”

“If you can't make it good,at least make it look good.”

“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”

“Some people may call me a nerd. I claim the label with pride.”

“I believe that if you show people the problems and you show Them The Solutions They Will Be Moved To Act”

“Power comes not from knowledge kept but from knowledge shared.”

“So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.”

“Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

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

“The vision is really about empowering workers giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.”

“Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.”

“Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things.”

“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”

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

“In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not...”

“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.”

“If you give people tools, and they use their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.”

“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.”

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.”

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

“If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.”

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