Top 100 Melinda Gates Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

4. “All lives have an equal value.”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

6. “If you don’t set your own agenda, somebody else will.” If I didn’t fill my schedule with things I felt were important, other people would fill my schedule with things they felt were important.”

— Melinda Gates

7. “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.”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

9. “When we invest in women, we invest in a powerful source of global development.”

— Melinda Gates

10. “Empathy allows for listening, and listening leads to understanding.”

— Melinda Gates

11. “Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise. It will take courage and insight, because the people we push to the margins are the ones who trigger in us the feelings we’re afraid of.”

— Melinda Gates

12. “Their cup is not empty; you can’t just pour your ideas into it. Their cup is already full, so you have to understand what is in their cup.” If you don’t understand the meaning and beliefs behind a community’s practices, you won’t present your idea in the context of their values and concerns, and people won’t hear you.”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

14. “I’m wholehearted about whatever I do.”

— Melinda Gates

15. “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.”

— Melinda Gates

16. “What great changes have not been ambitious?”

— Melinda Gates

17. “And how can we create a moment of lift in human hearts so that we all want to lift up women? Because sometimes all that’s needed to lift women up is to stop pulling them down.”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

19. “There is no equality without safety.”

— Melinda Gates

20. “We all want to have something to offer. This is how we belong. It’s how we feel included. So if we want to include everyone, then we have to help everyone develop their talents and use their gifts for the good of the community. That’s what inclusion means – everyone is a contributor. And if they need help to become a contributor, then we should help them, because they are full members in a community that supports everyone.”

— Melinda Gates

21. “Women and girls should be able to determine their own future, no matter where they’re born.”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

23. “One life is worth no more or less than any other.”

— Melinda Gates

24. “When girls are educated and free to pursue their passions, they contribute more to a thriving society. When women have a voice, they raise it to demand a life that is greater than what they’ve been told they have a right to expect. And these demands change the future for everyone.”

— Melinda Gates

25. “When people can’t agree, it’s often because there is no empathy, no sense of shared experience. If you feel what others feel, you’re more likely to see what they see. Then you can understand one another. Then you can move to the honest and respectful exchange of ideas that is the mark of a successful partnership. That’s the source of progress.”

— Melinda Gates

26. “We all want something to offer. This is how we belong. It’s how we feel included. So if we want to include everyone, we have to help everyone develop their talents and use their gifts for the good of the community. That’s what inclusion means – everyone is a contributes.”

— Melinda Gates

27. “My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups – development, testing, marketing, user education.”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

29. “Helping people doesn’t have to be an unsound financial strategy.”

— Melinda Gates

30. “If we don’t empower women, we don’t allow them to unlock the potential of themselves and their children.”

— Melinda Gates

31. “I felt suicidal. I couldn’t stop crying. I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be great if the car crashed and I died?”

— Melinda Gates

32. “As a parent, the responsible thing to do – if you love your child – is to vaccinate your child.”

— Melinda Gates

33. “Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings... This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves.”

— Melinda Gates

34. “As women gain rights, families flourish, and so do societies. That connection is built on a simple truth: Whenever you include a group that’s been excluded, you benefit everyone. And when you’re working globally to include women and girls, who are half of every population, you’re working to benefit all members of every community. Gender equity lifts everyone. Women’s rights and society’s health and wealth rise together.”

— Melinda Gates

35. “The premise of this foundation is one life on this planet is no more valuable than the next.”

— Melinda Gates

36. “An abusive culture, to me, is any culture that needs to single out and exclude a group. It’s always a less productive culture because the organization’s energy is diverted from lifting people up to keeping people down. It’s like an autoimmune disease where the body sees its own organs as threats and begins attacking them. One of the most common signs of an abusive culture is the false hierarchy that puts women below men.”

— Melinda Gates

37. “You can’t save kids just with vaccines.”

— Melinda Gates

38. “Being a feminist means believing that every woman should be able to use her voice and pursue her potential, and that women and men should all work together to take down the barriers and end the biases that still hold women back.”

— Melinda Gates

39. “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.”

— Melinda Gates

40. “When women can decide whether and when to have children, it saves lives, promotes health, expands education, and creates prosperity – no matter what country in the world you’re talking about.”

— Melinda Gates

41. “If you want to lift up an economy in Africa, you basically start with the women.”

— Melinda Gates

42. “If there is any meaning in life greater than connecting with other human beings, I haven’t found it.”

— Melinda Gates

43. “As much as we need women on the ground delivering these services, we also need women in high places with vision and power.”

— Melinda Gates

44. “I am inspired by the women I meet everywhere I go. They have to work so hard just to make sure their families survive, but somehow they stay optimistic and do everything in their power to make the future better than the past.”

— Melinda Gates

45. “It’s important to remember that behind every data point is a daughter, a mother, a sister – a person with hopes and dreams.”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

47. “Killian says, “To be known without being loved is terrifying. To be loved without being known has no power to change us. But to be deeply known and deeply loved transforms us.”

— Melinda Gates

48. “We look in our own backyard and say, ‘How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?’”

— Melinda Gates

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

— Melinda Gates

50. “Sometimes it’s the people you can’t help who inspire you the most.”

— Melinda Gates