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

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

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.

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

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

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.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.

I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has.

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.

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance... you thrive on that.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

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.

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.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn't cool.

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.

I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there's a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

Common Core is a big win for education.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.

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.

I've always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

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

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

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.

Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

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.

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don't want to get malaria.

The future of advertising is the Internet.

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 future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.

We all sort of do want incentives for creative people to still exist at a certain level. You know, maybe rock stars shouldn't make as much; who knows? But you want as much creativity to take place in the future as took place in the past.

Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad - really, really bad. I'd say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government's name.

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.