A Quote by Melinda Gates

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.
But for those who really want to make the world a better place, can we start looking at Bill Gates's path instead of Steve Jobs? I like my iPad, but Gates is one of the greatest heroes of our time. For me, that has nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
I get very picky. There's sort of a line you have to walk between working and doing something you actually want to be a part of, as opposed to just working for the work. That often puts you in a place where you have to choose whether or not you want to wait for good material to come along.
The competition between me and Bill Gates, probably: Who can spend money more effectively that can do better philanthropy.
Bill Gates has become the patron saint of philanthropy and the poster child of rebirth, and from what I can tell, rightly so.
I would like to share something that is being done extremely well by Bill Gates through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation is only going to address areas which are seen by Bill or Melinda as ills of the world. The foundation has no perpetuity.
I firmly believe that philanthropy is most effective and outcome-oriented when you ensure that your pledge actually gets spent.
Whether at work, at home or in public, we have been trained to believe that who we are at the core of our being is often unacceptable. As a result, we work diligently to live up to - and sometimes down to - what others have made us out to be, whether or not it is an accurate reflection of who we are.
I like any story that starts one place and really takes a huge journey to a whole new place; that people in their life want to take that journey. They want to be able to find things in their life that aren't working and work through them to a new place of change.
One day about 10 years ago the door to my office opened and who walked in but Bill Gates.... Seemed like a nice guy and has done more with his money than most billionaires. But that's as far as I want to go being kind to Bill Gates.
I look at Bill Clinton, the way I look at Bill Gates. As long as my Microsoft stock is going up, I don't care what Bill Gates does in the privacy of his own home.
When I work there are two distinct phases: the phase of pushing the work along, getting something to happen, where all the input comes from me, and phase two, where things start to combine in a way that wasn't expected or predicted by what I supplied. Once phase two begins everything is okay, because then the work starts to dictate its own terms. It starts to get an identity which demands certain future moves. But during the first phase you often find that you come to a full stop.
Observation of my life to date shows that the larger the number for whom I work, the more positively effective I become. Thus, it is obvious that if I work always and only for all humanity, I will be optimally effective.
For instance, in 1999, Bill Gates not only published a new book on work at the speed of thought but also detailed how Microsoft's 'Falconview' software would enable the destruction of bridges in Kosovo.
Jobs would have ever have asserted that Bill Gates was not serious about technology. He was a huge pioneer in that world, albeit doing something quite different in approach from what Steve did. He was dismissive of Gates' foundation work as something he did to make himself feel better.
Whether people are in America or in Africa, people want to work. They want to have purpose. They want to provide for themselves and their families. They don't want handouts. They don't want to be completely dependent on their governments - even though there's usually no opportunity for that anyway.
I think: 'Wouldn't it be great to work with Bill Murray?' And then I'm like, 'You know what, just appreciate Bill Murray from afar, don't find out that maybe he's not the dude you want to work with.'
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