Bill Gates Speech Favorites: The Most Famous Bill Gates Speeches


Looking for Bill Gates speech quotes? Here are my favorite excerpts from the most famous speeches.

Bill Gates Speech – Bill Gates Commencement Speech at Harvard University (2007)

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

Bill Gates Speech – College Tour 2008: Stanford University

Well, it’s great to be back here at Stanford. You may know that Microsoft’s CEO went to Stanford, but I induced him to drop out. So, he never got a degree from Stanford. He did get an undergraduate degree, but I still think of him as a fellow dropout.

Bill Gates Speech – World Economics Forum 2008

As you all may know, in July I’ll make a big career change. I’m not worried; I believe I’m still marketable. (Laughter.) I’m a self-starter, I’m proficient in Microsoft Office. (Laughter.) I guess that’s it. (Laughter.) Also I’m learning how to give money away.

So, this is the last time I’ll attend Davos as a full-time employee of Microsoft.

This is how I see the world, and it should make one thing clear: I am an optimist.

But I am an impatient optimist. The world is getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough, and it’s not getting better for everyone.

The great advances in the world have often aggravated the inequities in the world. The least needy see the most improvement, and the most needy get the least — in particular the billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.

Creative capitalism takes this interest in the fortunes of others and ties it to our interest in our own fortunes in ways that help advance both. This hybrid engine of self-interest and concern for others can serve a much wider circle of people than can be reached by self-interest or caring alone.

Bill Gates Speech – International Consumer Electronics Show 2008 (Las Vegas)

A key building block certainly for Microsoft is the Windows platform. We’ll evolve that and use it as really the centerpiece building block. This actually was an incredible year for PCs. PC sales grew over 13 percent. Of course, that’s a really gigantic base, and it’s been amazing to see that. Next year, again, the prediction is for double-digit growth. A year ago, we launched Vista. I’m pleased to say that we’ve got over 100 million people using Vista now, and that’s a very significant milestone for the kind of applications development, and special hardware work that we think is very important. We have great partners building neat new form factor PCs using unique capabilities. A lot of these are portable devices. A lot of them are far more stylish than anything you’ve seen before, smaller, fitting into new ways that people use personal computers.

Bill Gates Speech – College Tour 2008: Washington University

Now, when Paul and I were young and started Microsoft we had in mind this idea that computing would be free, and so we let our minds wander to any type of computer that might be possible in the future. And even then we thought about some things that are not yet achieved, things like visual recognition, speech understanding, deep gathering of data, and machine learning that would relate to that. So in a sense we can say we’re only part way through achieving that original dream of software empowerment.

Another way that we can say we’re only part way there is just look at the population of the globe. Personal computing, mobile phones benefit less than a third of all people. There’s about a billion PCs, each of those gets used by multiple people. There’s about 2 billion mobile phones that are typically used only by one person. So we’re there in about a third, and two-thirds are not getting any direct benefit. But, the original slogan of Microsoft, going back to its earliest days, was a computer on every desk, and in every home, using powerful software.


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