Some Gatesian Thoughts :)

Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of the world's largest software company, Microsoft Corporation, is also the world's richest man. His personal wealth has been estimated at $50 billion (Rs 225,000 crore).

Amazing for a man who does not have a college degree, having dropped out of Harvard to establish Microsoft. Here are some memorable Gatesian observations:
The ones I liked are in Bold and Italics :-

• "I wish I wasn't (the world's richest man). There's nothing good that comes out of that. You get more visibility as a result of it."
• At a chat show for a television channel in New Delhi in December 2005, he shared the platform with Infosys Chairman N R Narayana Murthy. When the mike was handed over to Murthy to test, he said, "One, two, three..." into it and gave it to the Microsoft czar, who promptly said, "One billion, two billion, three billion..."
• "My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things."
• "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."
• "If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure."
• "Life is not fair; get used to it."
• "Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many chances as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself."
• The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
• You will not make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
• "In business, by the time you realise you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone."
• Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.
• Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
• "There will be 'two societies' in the future: high-paid knowledge workers and low-paid service workers."
• "If you're asking whether I intentionally mess up my hair, no, I don't. And certain things, like my freckles, they're just there. I don't do anything consciously. I suppose I could get contact lenses. I suppose I could comb my hair more often."