Melinda Gates Quotes

It's the mark of a backward society - or a society moving backward - when decisions are made for women by men.

We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.

If societies are going to elevate women to equality with men - and declare that people of any race or religion have the same rights as anyone else - then we have to have men and women and every racial and religious group together writing the code. … Diversity is the best way to defend equality. If people from diverse groups are not making those decisions, the burdens and benefits of society will be divided unequally and unfairly - with the people writing the rules ensuring themselves a greater share of the benefits and a lesser share of the burdens of any society. … That's why we have to include everyone in the decisions that shape our cultures, because even the best of us are blinded by our own interests. If you care about equality, you have to embrace diversity -

It's really one of my all-time favorite things to do. To go out and really see the kids and visit the moms who are in these programs because I think I really get to see what happens on the ground and connect with them about what changes are that happen in their lives because of some of the giving that we're able to do.

We set out what's going to be our work time versus our foundation time versus family time, and we'll reassess that ... sometimes every week.

Think, for a moment, about our educational ladder.
We've strengthened the steps lifting students from elementary school to junior high, and those from junior high to high school.
But, that critical step taking students from high school into adulthood is badly broken. And it can no longer support the weight it must bear.

I'm wholehearted about whatever I do.

You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.

The rules that shape the lives of employees in the workplace today often don't honor the lives of employees outside the workplace. That can make the workplace a hostile place - because it pits your work against your family in a contest one side has to lose.

It is especially galling that some of the people who want to cut funding for contraceptives cite morality. In my view, there is no morality without empathy, and there is certainly no empathy in this policy. Morality is loving your neighbor as yourself, which comes from seeing your neighbor as yourself, which means trying to ease your neighbor's burdens - not add to them.

Being a feminist means believing that every woman should be able to use her voice and pursue her potential, and that women and men should all work together to take down the barriers and end the biases that still hold women back.

After a number of years dating, we decided we were good partners.

One of the longest-running public health studies dates from the 1970s, when half of the families in a number of villages in Bangladesh were given contraceptives and the other half were not. Twenty years later, the mothers who took contraceptives were healthier. Their children were better nourished. Their families had more wealth. The women had higher wages. Their sons and daughters had more schooling.
The reasons are simple: When the women were able to time and space their pregnancies, they were more likely to advance their education, earn an income, raise healthy children, and have the time and money to give each child the food, care, and education needed to thrive. When children reach their potential, they don't end up poor. This is how families and countries get out of poverty. In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.

Faith in action to me means going to the margins of society, seeking out those who are isolated, and bringing them back in. I was putting my faith into action when I went into the field and met the women who asked me about contraceptives. So, yes, there is a Church teaching about contraceptives - but there is another Church teaching, which is love of neighbor. When a woman who wants her children to thrive asks me for contraceptives, her plea puts these two Church teachings into conflict, and my conscience tells me to support the woman's desire to keep her children alive. To me, that aligns with Christ's teaching to love my neighbor.

I'm happy we have three healthy children and we'll stay with three healthy children.

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

When these barriers are broken and opportunities open up, they not only lift women out of poverty; they can elevate women to equality with men in every culture and every level of society. No other single change can do more to improve the state of the world.

When were you born, who are your parents, where did you grow up? None of us earns these things. These things were given to us. So when we strip away all of our luck and our privilege, and we consider where we'd be without them, it becomes much easier to see someone who's poor and say, "That could be me." And that's empathy.

When we better understand the realities of these women's lives, we are able to design and deliver solutions that are more useful to them.

An abusive culture, to me, is any culture that needs to single out and exclude a group. It's always a less productive culture because the organization's energy is diverted from lifting people up to keeping people down. It's like an autoimmune disease where the body sees its own organs as threats and begins attacking them. One of the most common signs of an abusive culture is the false hierarchy that puts women below men.

What great changes have not been ambitious?

There are absolutely lots of teachers who are trying to come into the profession, but they are not attracted enough to say, 'I'm going to switch careers to do it,' or they are often not retained ... because the salaries and the compensation aren't there to make it happen.

Deep human connection is ... the purpose and the result of a meaningful life - and it will inspire the most amazing acts of love, generosity, and humanity.

If you invest in a girl or a woman, you're investing in everyone else.

When it's "he said/she said," the woman can't win. But when it's "he said/she said/she said/she said/she said/she said," transparency has a chance, and light can flood the places where abusive behavior thrives.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.

All lives have an equal value.

I should know; perfectionism has always been a weakness of mine. Brene' Bown captures the motive in the mindset of the perfectionist in her book Daring Greatly: "If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame." This is the game, and I'm the player. Perfectionism for me comes from the feelings that I don't know enough. I'm not smart enough. Not hardworking enough. Perfectionism spikes for me if I'm going into a meeting with people who disagree with me, or if I'm giving a talk to experts to know more about the topic I do … when I start to feel inadequate and my perfectionism hits, one of the things I do is start gathering facts. I'm not talking about basic prep; I'm talking about obsessive fact-gathering driven by the vision that there shouldn't be anything I don't know. If I tell myself I shouldn't overprepare, then another voice tells me I'm being lazy. Boom. Ultimately, for me, perfectionism means hiding who I am. It's dressing myself up so the people I want to impress don't come away thinking I'm not as smart or interesting as I thought. It comes from a desperate need to not disappoint others. So I over-prepare. And one of the curious things I've discovered is that what I'm over-prepared, I don't listen as well; I go ahead and say whatever I prepared, whether it responds to the moment or not. I miss the opportunity to improvise or respond well to a surprise. I'm not really there. I'm not my authentic

Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It's up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it's on the basis of race. Depending on a culture's fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders - even in their own homes.
Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we're most afraid we will find in ourselves - and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins.
And we're often not honest about what's happening. If we're on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, "I'm not in that situation because I'm different. But that's just pride talking. We could easily be that pers

One of the defining features of hierarchy is that you take the powerful and exciting jobs for yourself and impose the crummy tasks on others. That's a purpose of hierarchy. So when you come together to share the unpleasant work it's an attack on hierarchy. Because what's the point of hierarchy if not getting someone else to do what you don't want to do? What is hierarchy but a way to escape your share of the responsibilities?

We talk a lot in our home together about where we're going, what I'm doing.

Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it's not a onetime thing; it's an iterative process.

Helping people doesn't have to be an unsound financial strategy.

Birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global health agenda, and the victims of this paralysis are the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

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 believe that all lives have equal value. That all men and women are created equal. That everyone belongs. That everyone has rights, and everyone has the right to flourish. I believe that when people who are bound by the rules have no role in shaping the rules, moral blind spots become law, and the powerless bear the burden. … I believe that entrenched social norms that shift society's benefits to the powerful and its burdens to the powerless not only hurt the people pushed out but also always hurt the whole.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

I've heard nauseating stories of women who have given up their dreams because they fear for their safety, who go to worse schools that are closer to home in order to avoid sexual predators. These stories come from all over the world, including the US. Until the day we end all gender-based violence, we need stronger efforts to protect women and girls. There is no equality without safety.

If I ever see myself as separate or superior, if I try to lift myself up by pulling down others, if I believe people are on a journey I have completed, doing personal work I have mastered, attempting tasks I've accomplished--if I have any feeling that I am above them instead of trying to rise with them, then I have isolated myself from them.

If you want to lift up humanity, empower women. It is the most comprehensive, pervasive, high-leverage investment you can make in human beings.

It is still just unbelievable to us that diarrhea is one of the leading causes of child deaths in the world.

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.

You can't save kids just with vaccines.

I felt suicidal. I couldn't stop crying. I remember thinking, wouldn't it be great if the car crashed and I died?

Being yourself sounds like a saccharin prescription for how to make it in an aggressive culture but it's not as sweet as it sounds. It means not acting in a way that is false just to fit in. It's expressing your talent, values, and opinions in your style, defending your rights, and never sacrificing yourself respect. That is power.

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.

Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings... This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we're most afraid we will find in ourselves

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

Government funding that's coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It's really palpable - it's making a huge difference saving lives.

Bill and I both firmly believe that even the most difficult global health problems can be solved.

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

Opportunities have to be equal before you can know if abilities are equal. And opportunities for women have never been equal.

If you don't have an effective teacher in front of the classroom, you won't change the trajectory for students.

…contraceptives are the greatest life-saving, poverty-ending, women-empowering innovation ever created.

The premise of this foundation is one life on this planet is no more valuable than the next.

Contraceptives save the lives of mothers and newborns. Contraceptives also reduce abortion. As a result of contraceptive use, there were 26 million fewer unsafe abortions in the world's poorest countries in just one year, according to the most recent data.

Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise. It will take courage and insight, because the people we push to the margins are the ones who trigger in us the feelings we're afraid of.

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

The world is full of what seem like intractable problems. Often we let that paralyze us. Instead, let is spur you to action. There are some people in the world that we can't help, but there are so many more that we can. So when you see a mother and her children suffering in another part of the world, don't look away. Look right at them. Let them break your heart, then let your empathy and your talents help you make a difference in the lives of others. Whether you volunteer every week or just a few times a year, your time and unique skills are invaluable.

I want to live as private a life as I can because of our children.

Everyone agrees that the failure of our high schools is tragic. It's bad business, and it's bad policy. But we act as if it can't be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools; we can redesign them.

We all want something to offer. This is how we belong. It's how we feel included. So if we want to include everyone, we have to help everyone develop their talents and use their gifts for the good of the community. That's what inclusion means - everyone is a contributes.

The most radical approach to resistance is acceptance--and acceptance does not mean accepting the world as it is. It means accepting our pain as it is. If we refuse to accept our pain, then we're just trying to make ourselves feel better--and when our hidden motive is to make ourselves to feel better, there is no limit to the damage we can do in the name of justice.

To be known without being loved it terrifying

To be loved without being known has no power to change us

But be to be deeply known and deeply loved transforms us

(from Melinda's friend, Killian)

I am inspired by the women I meet everywhere I go. They have to work so hard just to make sure their families survive, but somehow they stay optimistic and do everything in their power to make the future better than the past.

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

In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.

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

Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh.

If you invest in a girl or a woman, you are investing in everybody else.

Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It's what propels societies forward.

But we also believe in taking risks, because that's how you move things along.

Gender bias does worldwide damage. It's a cause of low productivity on farms. It's a source of poverty and disease. It's at the core of social customs that keep women down.

Because when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.