Bill Gates

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.

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.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things.

Americans move more than 10 times over the course of a lifetime.

I didn't used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don't approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides.

I spend a lot of time reading.