William H. Gates Sr. - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

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Speeches & Commentary by William H. Gates Sr., Co-Chair

United Methodist Church General Conference

"You are 12 million people armed with the conviction that all the world is your parish, which makes you the most powerful weapon there is against disease."

Engineers Without Borders (March 28, 2008)

"It's a part of your vision, just as it's a part of ours, that technology doesn't work in the wrong context.You don’t start with technology. You start by finding out what people need, and then you see if technology can meet those needs in a better way."

National Conference on Ending Family Homelessness (February 7, 2008)

"We can make a society in which fewer families become homeless, in which families that do become homeless don't stay that way for long, and in which homeless families that become stable stay stable—permanently."

United Way of Greater Los Angeles (October 24, 2007)

"I am convinced that solving the high school crisis is our society's most pressing moral obligation and our most urgent domestic policy priority."

Rotary International Convention (June 19, 2007)

"You are beacons of a simple truth—that the key ingredient to making a peaceful world is the understanding that all people, no matter where they live, are equally precious."

Ounce of Prevention Fund Luncheon (April 17, 2007)

"Imagine what it must be like for a child who isn’t ready for the first day of kindergarten. On one side of her is a girl writing her ABCs. On the other side is a boy who can tell time. And yet she doesn’t recognize a single letter."

Hearing, Speech, and Deafness Center (March 20, 2007)

"Let me tell you a little bit about how we at the foundation arrived at the conclusion you have also come to—that focusing on our youngest children is one of the smartest investments we can make in the future."

Bennett College Founders’ Day (October 8, 2006)

"As you go through your years at Bennett and think about your futures, I hope you learn to look beyond tomorrow, next week, and next year. I hope you ask yourself what you can do over the 50 years of your working lives to make the problems that plague our world a little bit better."

Seattle Rotary (August 23, 2006)

"I prefer to think that we are developing a new point of view about who our neighbors are. They’re not just the family next door or people across town. They are university students from Oman. They are children in Bangladesh. They are human beings all over the world..."

2006 Gates Award for Global Health: The Carter Center (June 1, 2006)
"...the Center wages peace where people aren’t safe. It promotes democracy where people aren’t free. And it fights disease where people aren’t well."

University of Oklahoma College of Education: Celebration of Education (April 28, 2006)
"I started tonight by thanking you for giving our foundation the Award of Distinction. Let me finish by thanking you for doing something much more important: for educating our children."

Council on Foundations: 2005 Conference for Community Foundations (September 20, 2005)
"Every national or regional tragedy is actually hundreds or thousands of individual tragedies, and one of the great strengths of community foundations is that you know—as only a neighbor can—the unique needs of the people you serve."

2005 Gates Award for Global Health: African Medical and Research Foundation (June 2, 2005)
"…AMREF is more than a voice of Africa. It is deeds: acts of compassion, of intelligence, of purpose."

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