Bill Gates Quotes

In software you can't really add people and expect to get more done, because their ability to understand the program and what's going on it would require so much investment and all their work would require so much review that you'd be more likely to slow things down.

I regularly read Internet user groups filled with messages from people trying to solve software incompatibility problems that, in terms of complexity, make the U.S. Tax Code look like Dr. Seuss.

I really wanted people to pay attention to me and like me. And the class clown thing, you know? There's a weird desperation to the class clown when you really investigate it. Why are they trying to be the clown so much? They're filling some kind of hole.

Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.

We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them.

Hardware: where the people in your company's software section will tell you the problem is. Software: where the people in your company's hardware section will tell you the problem is.

People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.

Do what you love and try not to look at what other people occupy themselves with. Most people seem restless and bounce around too much to focus or even pay attention enough to themselves to figure out exactly what they really do love, as opposed to what the people that surround them are doing.

The whole intent of Perl 5's module system was to encourage the growth of Perl culture rather than the Perl core.

I think the movies that don't try to please people are movies that you respect more in the end.

For me any moment in front of a crowd is embarrassing, because I can't stand being in front of people. I'm probably one of the worst public speakers. I try to avoid it, but there are times when it's just too rude not to do it. But there really isn't a moment that's not embarrassing for me if I'm going to stand up in front of a crowd.

You'll also hear about the widening gap in the educated and the uneducated. The liberals will all say, "We must do something about it" and some in our population swoon, "Oh, yes, it's so unfair, and so unfortunate, and we've gotta do something about the inequality." So the Democrats then have their reason to do something about it, and the way they go about it is not trying to make people equal at all. The way they go about it is not even rooted in changing inequality, at the end of the day. The way they go about it is destructive for everybody.

Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story.

Of course performing talent, that's clear. Maybe this is not so well-known among young people who are interested in music, who are talented in music, but they're trying to figure out how to go about it.

When someone disagrees with me, I do not have to immediately start revising what I just said. People don't want me to always agree with them. They can sense this is phony. They can sense I am trying to control them: I am agreeing with them to make them like me. They feel; "I don't want to exist to like you. I DON'T exist to like you."

Why ... did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions -- not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

Some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others.

Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.

Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don't be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.

Imagine you have six loans, small to huge. People want to close loans and because of that, they try to pay off the small loans, but that's not the right strategy. The right strategy, of course, is to pay the loan with the highest interest rate. People make this mistake and it costs them lots and lots of money, it's a very expensive mistake because interest rates accumulate and become very, very expensive very quickly.

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.

It's just hard to look at yourself and guess how you're going to be perceived by other people sometimes. I do my best to let people know that I'm approachable, but I'm a human being just like anybody else. Sometimes people forget that. They forget that you're a person and they treat you like this celebrity thing. But I have to be patient with that, and I try to be.

Everybody has anger or regret in them one way or another. They all try different things to get it out. Some people go to psychiatrists. Some paint pictures. Some people talk it out.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.

If I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience and experience only,' I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.'