“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.”

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.

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.

With economic opportunity, sometimes it’s making sure that if they’re not in a place where they can have good jobs, that when they have economic opportunity, they have digital tools to use.

Around the world we have girls in primary school at about the same rate now as boys, but keeping them in quality secondary schools is where the world is lagging. I’m seeing a lot of countries look at this now.

Now, as smartphones are coming up, there are all kinds of apps that will start to be developed that will help women.

What great changes have not been ambitious?

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

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

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

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

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

If I really believe all lives have equal value, and if I use contraceptives, which I do, and if I’m counselling my son and my two daughters to use them, how am I not serving the women who don’t have access to the contraceptives they need?

When we better understand the realities of these women’s lives, we are able to design and deliver solutions that are more useful to them.

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

My undergraduate work was in computer science and economics. It just happened to be at that time when 34 percent of computer-science majors were women. We didn’t realize it was at the peak at the time.

That’s universal – we all want to bring every good thing to our children. But what’s not universal is our ability to provide every good thing.

The revolution has its own laws: in the period of its culmination it pushes the most highly developed, determined and far-seeing stratum of the revolutionary class to the most advanced positions.

The struggle between social classes and the history of ideologies. In general, intellectual movements closely reflect the trends of economic developments.

So I like the work he’s doing, and I support it, and I realise that he’s one of very few political leaders around the world that actually has early-childhood development strategise at the top of his agenda.

The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

President Obama is highly concerned with education. He’s a champion on early-childhood development strategies.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.

Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.