Melinda Gates Quotes

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.

A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.

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

Philanthropy is not about the money. It's about using whatever resources you have at your fingertips and applying them to improving the world.

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

All women, everywhere, have the same hopes: we want to be self-sufficient and create better lives for ourselves and our loved ones.

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.

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

Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.

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

You are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

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

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

Make sure you continue to trust what you know now about yourself and stay true to what you believe in

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.

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.

What great changes have not been ambitious?

We started our foundation because we believe we have a real opportunity to help advance equity around the world, to help make sure that, no matter where a person is born, he or she has the chance to live a healthy, productive life.

One life is worth no more or less than any other

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.

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

Sanitation issues in the developing world affect women more than they affect men.

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

You can't save kids just with vaccines.

If you don't invest in the woman, empower her, give her the things she needs to lift her family up, you're just not going to make the progress that you want to make. But if you put her at the centre, you can change a lot for that family, and it has ripple effects through the economy.

When I look at 225 million women who want contraceptives, and then I look at the 52 million unintended pregnancies that could be avoided by addressing this unmet need, where can we have the biggest impact with our voice, our dollars, our partners? It's on contraceptives. I would rather address the problem upstream.

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.

All lives have an equal value.

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.

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

Like in Africa, if somebody doesn't have fuel, they're still going and collecting firewood. If they get an oven, that's a huge difference. You can do things to reduce the inequities by making sure that they can get clean energy, safe energy. To make sure they're not having to collect water every day. That's huge for women in the developing world.

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.

In places like India with smartphones, there's an app now for women if they're in a violent situation, they can press one button. They've given their cell-phone number to five trusted friends, and right away their GPS location goes out: "Here I am."

Sometimes it's the people you can't help who inspire you the most.

I am Catholic, I was raised Catholic, I am a practicing Catholic. But I say we need to agree to disagree. We have a shared mission around poverty, and I focus on that, because we do a lot with the Catholic Church around poverty alleviation. I'm always looking for: what is the common thread? What do we care about? What do we believe in? We believe in women around the world. We believe in all lives have equal value.

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

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

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.

I've travelled extensively in the last 16 years - to slums in Bangladesh, to townships in South Africa, to all kinds of places in India, etc. When I would go and talk to villagers about something like vaccines, if I stayed long enough, the women would bring the conversation around and say: "What about this family planning tool? We can't keep having the number of children we're having."

Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That's the place that governments often don't want to, or can't, work.

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.

It's important to remember that behind every data point is a daughter, a mother, a sister—a person with hopes and dreams.

The biggest killers of children around the world are two things: diarrhea and pneumonia. When you think about it, in the United States, kids don't die of diarrhea anymore, but it's a huge problem in the developing world.

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

Vaccines are a miracle cure. Eight out of 10 children are getting vaccines.

Any social or cultural change has to be made openly and with people agreeing. You don't get there by just pushing an outsider's point of view.

The biggest pieces of work that we do are vaccines, because those save lives, and also family planning. Because if a woman can space the births of her children, it changes everything for her health and her child's health.

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

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

All of a sudden people in the United States start to realize that vaccines make a difference. The controversy and the myth that's there, we're always trying to bust through that. So when I see a disease outbreak, I say to myself, "OK, that'll get people realizing how lucky we are to have vaccines."