Melinda Gates

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.

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.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

We started this mostly from an intellectual place.

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.

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

You can't save kids just with vaccines.

I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.

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

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

All lives have an equal value.