Melinda Gates Quotes

Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant, but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision-makers. When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend. They invest in the long-term human capital of their families.

Many people are horrified at the idea of birth control. . . . It is simply the keynote of a new moral program.

In order to stabilize human population growth, we must prioritize the education of girls, the empowerment of women, the provision of ubiquitous access to the knowledge and techniques of fertility management, and the continued raising of child survival rates.

Family planning, birth control, no Muslim family can practice such an understanding.

Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life.

It needs to become as easy to get hold of a condom in a poor country as Coca-Cola.

My views on birth control are somewhat distorted by the fact that I was seventh of nine children.

Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime.

It is common sense that when women are able to plan their pregnancies, populations grow more slowly and as a result so do greenhouse gas emissions. Providing access to contraception and preventative health should be one of the many effective strategies used to fight climate change.

I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer.

I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth.

Have you noticed that all the people in favor of birth control are already born?

I have four kids. They are two years apart, and contraception has been very, very good to me.

As the largest contributor to the United Nations and funder of international family planning, the U.S. is in a unique position to continue to lead the global agenda and place reproductive health at its core.

World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size.

Women around the world should have a tool that helps them plan their pregnancies.

I feel very strongly about contraception even though I know people say that, as a good Catholic girl, I shouldn't. But I disagree because I think one of the keys to women's progression in the 20th century is being able to control their fertility.

Education of both men and women is a wonderful contraceptive.

I'm not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and give them some say in how many children they'll have, immediately the floor will rise.

It is not because woman is lacking in responsibility, but because she has too much of the latter that she demands to know how to prevent conception.

… the lack of access to basic family planning services and information undermines a woman’s ability to determine her own destiny. It also increases illness and mortality rates of women and their children, and inhibits the ability of families to climb out of poverty.

Your action means that the U.S. government will control what non-governmental recipients of U.S. international family planning assistance do and say with their own funds. You have imposed on the poorest women of the world a halt to information that women in the United States are guaranteed.

Usually this desire for family size limitation has been laid to economic pressure... It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion

Family planning campaigns should be increased so that the sizes of families are manageable and enjoy the best possible standard of living.

Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.