Bill Gates
Quotes & Wisdom
Context & Background
William henry bill gates iii born october 28 1955 is an american business magnate philanthropist investor computer programmer and inventor gates originally established his reputation as the cofounder of microsoft the worlds largest pc software company with paul allen during his career at microsoft gates held the positions of chairman ceo and chief software architect and was also the largest individual shareholder up until may 2014 he has also authored and coauthored several bookstoday he is consistently ranked in the forbes list of the worlds wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2014excluding a few brief periods post2008 between 2009 and 2014 his wealth more than doubled from 40 billion to more than 82 billion between 2013 and 2014 his wealth increased by 15 billion or around 15 billion more than the entire gdp of iceland in 2014gates is one of the bestknown entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution gates has been criticized for his business tactics which have been considered anticompetitive an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by numerous court rulings in the later stages of his career gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the bill melinda gates foundation established in 2000gates stepped down as chief executive officer of microsoft in january 2000 he remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself in june 2006 gates announced that he would be transitioning from fulltime work at microsoft to parttime work and fulltime work at the bill melinda gates foundation he gradually transferred his duties to ray ozzie who has since left microsoft chief software architect and craig mundie chief research and strategy officer gatess last fulltime day at microsoft was june 27 2008 he stepped down as chairman of microsoft in february 2014 taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed ceo satya nadella.
Bill Gates Quotes
“In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not...”
“I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.”
“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”
“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”