Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft), a guy who needs no introduction, is an inspiration to everybody. Numerous films and novels based on his life attempt to convey his characteristics. However, who better to relate a person’s story than his closest friend? These anecdotes will provide you with a glimpse into his life and personality.
Here are some brief anecdotes about Bill Gates written by his closest friend and co-founder Paul Allen that will bring you closer to his life.
One of the most popular anecdotes about Bill that everyone must have heard at some point is that he enjoys staying up all night working.
On one occasion, a new secretary arrived on Monday morning and discovered Bill laying on the office floor. As she was new and unaware of his working habits, she assumed he had been knocked unconscious. He later said that he had been working up a sweat all weekend and was only taking a brief sleep.
Two of his High School Stories will leave you in awe of his craziness and devotion.
As a high school student, he was always interested in programming; he and his buddy Allen honed their abilities on a DEC minicomputer operated by a local firm named C-Cubed.
However, as students, they did not have access to the same amount of information that firm personnel had, which upset them. Thus, at night, they both used to rummage through the company’s garbage can, looking for fascinating items. They discovered a hard copy of the TOPS-10 source code one night, which revealed several secrets.
When Bill Gates was a student in high school, he and Allen shared an apartment in southern Washington State, where they worked on a contract for temporary programming.
Bill strolled in the door one night with a plaster on his leg. While water skiing, he shattered his leg. He was supposed to return to Seattle for six weeks and carry that plaster. Within three weeks, he was able to remove his plaster and walk on his blue and black leg. Additionally, he went water skiing with the same damaged leg. “His leg held up in some way,” Allen writes.
Following these illuminating experiences, let’s look at some Bill Gates quotations that will offer you his perspective on life.
A Few Words About Bill Gates
Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest men living, is better known as William Henry Gates III. He is a business entrepreneur, philanthropist, humanitarian, and author from the United States of America.
Gates was born in 1955, the second son and only son of William and Mary Gates. Kristianne and Libby were his sisters. They grew raised in a friendly and close home environment where they were encouraged to strive for perfection.
He excelled in all major disciplines as a young student, including math, physics, and even theatre and English. Gates attended Harvard University in the autumn of 1973 but quit college two years later to concentrate on his firm, Microsoft, with Paul Allen. Their firm would later propel them to fame and fortune as two of the world’s wealthiest men.
Gates has served as CEO, chairman, and chief software architect at Microsoft throughout his career. However, in 2006, he left Microsoft to pursue a part-time position and concentrated his efforts on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charity organization he co-founded with his wife, Melinda, in 2000.
Apart from his contributions to Microsoft and charity, Gates is the author of two books: The Road Ahead and Business At the Speed of Thought. He has starred in four feature films and six documentaries, the most recent of which is Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, which is now streaming on Netflix. Gates has appeared as a guest star on television’s The Big Bang Theory.
Gates resides in Medina, Washington, with his wife and three children in Xanadu 2.0. Here are the best of Bill Gates’ most renowned and inspiring quotes, which discuss his views on education, technology, success, and money, among other topics.
Some of the Best Quotes by Bill Gates
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.”
“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.”
“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?”
“Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.”
“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?’”
“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.”
“Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.”
“Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.”
“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.”
“Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.”
“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.”
“The potential financial reward for building the ‘next Windows’ is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.”
“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”
“Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.”
“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $ cars that got , MPG.”
“Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.”
“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.”
“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.” “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.”
“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.”
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
“In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there’s such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.”
“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
“Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.”
“Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.”
“Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn’t willing to.”
“We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.”
“Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.” “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.”
“If you have 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.”
“Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.”
“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.”
“The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of , which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.”
“There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.”
“I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.”
“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.”
“Life is not fair. Get used to it.”
“Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself.”
“Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.”
“I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.”
“Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.”
“When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen.”
“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.”
“The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO emissions.”
“When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.”
“Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don’t think over time that’s a good way to go. I’m a huge believe in digital currency… but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I’m not involved in Bitcoin.”
“I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.”
“The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.”
“Measles will always show you if someone isn’t doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.”
“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.”
“Should there be cameras everywhere in outdoor streets? My personal view is having cameras in inner cities is a very good thing. In the case of London, petty crime has gone down. They catch terrorists because of it. And if something really bad happens, most of the time you can figure out who did it.”
“In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.”
“I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.”
“If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.”
“Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.”
“Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.”
“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”
“We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.”
“If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.”
“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.”
“A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.”
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
“Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.”
“If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?”
“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.”
“It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’”
“I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.”
“Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.”
“Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over billion tons. For each American, it’s about 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.”
“Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.”
“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”
“In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.”
“We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.”
“Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.”
“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.”
“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
“The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.”
“Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.”
“Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.”
“In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn’t been the case for teaching.”
“The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.”
“Philanthropy should be voluntary.”
“We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.”
“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.”
“DOS is ugly and interferes with users’ experience.”
“Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.”
“Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.”
“If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.”
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
“China adopted a capitalist system in the s, and they went from a % poverty rate to %.”
“Life is not fair; get used to it.”
“People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.”
“Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.”
“If you go back to , everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.”
“By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.”
“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”
“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.”
“Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.”
“Certainly there’s a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.”
“We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.”
“By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited… The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.”
“This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.”
“Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.”
“Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.”
“You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.”
“Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.”
“K ought to be enough for anybody.”
“I’m sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn’t on our radar screen. We were just making great software.”
“People everywhere love Windows.”
“Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO. And so, what we’re going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles.”
“Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.”
“Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.”
“Digital reading will completely take over. It’s lightweight and it’s fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.”
“It’s really kind of cool to have solar panels on your roof.”
“I am results-oriented.”
“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
“This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next years than it has in the last .”
“The future of advertising is the Internet.”
“Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.”
“China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth.”
“I spend a lot of time reading.”
“If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it’s good. It starts to balance out.”
Also Read,
- Grant Cardone Quotes
- Steve Jobs Quotes
- Oprah Winfrey Quotes
- Elon Musk Quotes
- Tai Lopez Quotes
- Jeff Bezos Quotes
- Gary Vee Quotes
- Guy Kawaski Quotes
- Seth Godin Quotes
Conclusion
Bill Gates is an inspiration to a lot of entrepreneurs out there. I hope you have gotten inspired by his wise thoughts by now. Please let me know in the comment section which of his quote you liked the best and why, Also, let me know if you have any better quotes to add to the list.