Bill Gates Risk Quotations

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

We bet the company on Windows and we deserve to benefit. It was a risk that's paid off immensely. In retrospect, committing to the graphics interface seems so obvious that now it's hard to keep a straight face.

We need to get a broader awareness. People say climate change is really bad, but painting that picture of what you're putting at risk.

There are ecosystems like coral reefs [at risk] through ocean acidification. Those are valuable things that we should protect.

At some point, that risk-taking private capital can take over, and have patents and trade secrets and things that let them lead the way, which happened with the steam engine and some other things, although with energy, the time of adoption is a lot longer than it is with, say, IT products or even medical advances, like drugs and vaccines.

Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn't willing to.