Bill Gates Quotes

I've seen disgusting excess in business, and I've seen disgusting excess in Washington. But at the same time, I've certainly learned that Washington matters and that you can't ignore it, especially when you get into telecom.

Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX. The browsers are written in C. The UNIX kernel - that pretty much the entire Internet runs on - is written in C.

Deregulation played virtually no role

It's very important that the government is close to the business community and that we understand their concerns. But at some point, the government needs to be a government.

We're not going to let some unelected bureaucrats in Washington stop us from moving forward with our agenda, but at the end of the day, CBO is not the Holy Grail.

What one has created by regulation, one could address by regulation.

There is certainly a role for regulation, but regulation should always take into account the impact that it has on markets, a balance that must be constantly weighed.

We can build a better product than Linux.

Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.

Technology can progress to an entire new generation in the time it takes one legislative committee to issue a report. Regulation of technology confronts us with two radically different time scales.

When a government faces an evil that might be avoided, the usual pattern is to first debate whether or not the evil is real or imagined; then determine how evil it really is; then is it an appropriate function of government to avoid it? Then what are the alternative ways to avoid it? Then what are the costs to avoid it? And finally, is the benefit of avoiding the evil worth the cost? In those cases where it is, it is by this time too late to avoid the evil and discussions shift to ameliorating the evil.

The last 6 months make it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.

Politics is about making institutions work somewhat better, helping people’s lives at the margins

In 10 years, ... you're going to see the most valuable economy in the world -- the largest economy in the world -- is going to be a country run by communists. The Chinese seem to be very good at capitalism. And this is going to have fundamental problems and present an identity crisis for the United States. Because for a long time, free markets coincided with liberties such as free speech, free press, free religion. And all of a sudden, this equation is going to be decoupled. And when it gets decoupled, we might find that democracy, the multitude of voices, actually impedes capitalism because a state that does not have any pretense of limited government can very quickly mandate a regulatory framework for drones, for electric cars, for self-driving cars, for any new innovation where they feel that they can leapfrog Western societies. And this is a very unique thing in the American experience. And this is why it's very important to think of American capitalism as an operating system and not as an ideology. Because when you think about it as an ideology, you can have good politics make for very, very bad policy. That market outcomes and democratic voices and battles for votes can end up stifling progress.

Washington agencies are now trying a backdoor approach to regulate our climate by abusing existing laws.

As presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have recognized, the real question is whether regulations, whether new or old, are justified. That requires a careful analysis of their costs and their benefits.

If you can't legislate, you can't deal with problems.

The Obama administration's zeal to not 'waste a good crisis,' as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, has been stunning even for Washington insiders to behold.

Some amount of support from government and regulator is required when you are looking at resolving systemic issues.

The Indian state has to be minimalist in regulatory interventions in social and economic matters; maximalist in providing the quality of life needs; and optimal in the maintenance of law and order.

As we have seen both in healthcare and energy, passing reckless, ill-conceived massive bills usually create more problems than we solve.

Microsoft loves Linux.

The problem is that once we focus on economic policy, much that is not science comes into play. Politics becomes involved, and political posturing is amply rewarded by public attention.

Countries all around the world, starting with the U.K., have started behavioural insight teams, often referred to as nudge units. And they seem to be doing lots of good.

I'm not here today to tell you government doesn't have a role to play. It does, but it needs to be the right role.