Quotes by "Melinda Gates"

I want them to see that in the universal human desire to be happy, to develop our gifts, to contribute to others, to love and be loved—we’re all the same. Nobody is any better than anybody else, and no one’s happiness or human dignity matters more than anyone else’s.

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.

The gender imbalance in unpaid work is such a compelling subject for me in part because it’s a common burden that binds many women together, but also because the causes of the imbalance run so deep that you cannot solve them with a technical fix. You have to renegotiate the relationship. To me, no question is more important than this one: Does your primary relationship have love and respect and reciprocity and a sense of teamwork and belonging and mutual growth? I believe all of us ask ourselves this question in one way or another—because I think it is one of the greatest longings of life.

When women can decide whether and when to have children, it saves lives, promotes health, expands education, and creates prosperity—no matter what country in the world you’re talking about.

Equal education moves people toward empowerment, but unequal education does the reverse. Of all the divisive tools that are used to push people to the margins, unequal education is the most damaging and enduring. Unless there is an explicit effort to include everyone, schools will never be a remedy for exclusion; they will be the cause of it.

We would be driving down the street in a place like Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and started to see, my gosh, the only people that have shoes are men. Why does that woman have a baby in her belly and one on her back, and she's carrying a huge load of bananas? You start to ask these questions.

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.

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.

Kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what's wrong with the school system.

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

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.

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.

I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.

There's a false perception that women in Africa somehow don't love their babies they way we do, don't grieve their loss the way we would. That is simply not true.

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.

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

I think it's very important that we instill in our kids that it has nothing to do with their name or their situation that they're growing up in; it has to do with who they are as an individual.

Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.

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