Quotes from Melinda Gates

We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.

Men make different investments than women do. Women tend to invest more of their earnings than men do in their family's well-being - as much as 10 times more.

Philanthropy is not about the money. It's about using whatever resources you have at your fingertips and applying them to improving the world.

Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It's what propels societies forward.

I'm happy we have three healthy children and we'll stay with three healthy children.

After a number of years dating, we decided we were good partners.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

Government funding that's coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It's really palpable - it's making a huge difference saving lives.

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

Birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global health agenda, and the victims of this paralysis are the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

If you ask, who has the chance to move into the city and get a good job out in the developing world? It's a man. Who's left to care for the kids back at home? The woman is.

Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.

Bill and I both firmly believe that even the most difficult global health problems can be solved.

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.

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.

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

Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh.

I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.

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

We would be driving down the street in a place like Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and started to see, my gosh, the only people that have shoes are men. Why does that woman have a baby in her belly and one on her back, and she's carrying a huge load of bananas? You start to ask these questions.

In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.

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

Deep human connection is ... the purpose and the result of a meaningful life - and it will inspire the most amazing acts of love, generosity, and humanity.

One life is worth no more or less than any other