Melinda Gates

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

The premise of this foundation is one life on this planet is no more valuable than the next.

I want to live as private a life as I can because of our children.

It is still just unbelievable to us that diarrhea is one of the leading causes of child deaths in the world.

Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio.

But we also believe in taking risks, because that's how you move things along.

There are absolutely lots of teachers who are trying to come into the profession, but they are not attracted enough to say, 'I'm going to switch careers to do it,' or they are often not retained... because the salaries and the compensation aren't there to make it happen.

There's a false perception that women in Africa somehow don't love their babies they way we do, don't grieve their loss the way we would. That is simply not true.

I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.

You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.