Quotes from Melinda Gates

If you can't travel to the developing world, look at helping to fund a woman with a small loan and follow her. Learn her story. Learn about the difference that you're making.

Make sure you continue to trust what you know now about yourself and stay true to what you believe in

I think it's very important that we instill in our kids that it has nothing to do with their name or their situation that they're growing up in; it has to do with who they are as an individual.

As a parent, the responsible thing to do - if you love your child - is to vaccinate your child.

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.

Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That's the place that governments often don't want to, or can't, work.

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.

That's universal - we all want to bring every good thing to our children. But what's not universal is our ability to provide every good thing.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.

We started this mostly from an intellectual place.

A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.

When we invest in women and girls, we are investing in the people who invest in everyone else.

Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.

All women, everywhere, have the same hopes: we want to be self-sufficient and create better lives for ourselves and our loved ones.

If we don't empower women, we don't allow them to unlock the potential of themselves and their children.

You are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

Women and girls should be able to determine their own future, no matter where they're born.

When we invest in women, we invest in a powerful source of global development

Sanitation issues in the developing world affect women more than they affect men.

Take time to learn about the lives of women around the world-and try to play a small part in their fight to create the future they deserve.

I'm constantly saying to myself, 'I'm lucky I was born in the United States.'

Women are the centre of the family. It's the woman who decides what's eaten in the house, when to have the kids vaccinated; everything that has to do with the children's health revolves around her.

Now, as smartphones are coming up, there are all kinds of apps that will start to be developed that will help women.

Our economies are built on the backs of all this unpaid labor that women do.