Bill Gates’ Commencement Speech at Harvard 2007

---

President Bok, former PresidentRudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard corporation andthe board of overseers. Members of the faculty, parents and especially thegraduates.

I’ve beenwaiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come backand get my degree.”

I want to thankHarvard for this honor. I’ll be changing my job next year and it will be niceto finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud thegraduates for taking a much more direct route to your degrees.

For my part, I’mjust happy that the Crimson called me Harvard’s most successful drop out.

I guess thatmakes me valedictorian of my own special class. I did the best of everyone whofailed.

But I also wantto be recognized as the guy who got Steve Balmer to drop out of businessschool.

I’m a badinfluence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation.

If I’d spoken atyour orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was aphenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating.

I used to sit inon lots of classes that I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life wasterrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Courier House.

There werealways a lot of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, becauseeveryone knew that I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning.

That’s how Icame to be the leader of the antisocial group. We clunged each other as a wayof validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was agreat place to live. There were more women up there and most of the guys weremath-science types. The combination offered me the best odds, if you know whatI mean.

That’s where Ilearned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee you success.

One of mybiggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975. When I made a call fromCourier House to a company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that had begun makingthe world’s first personal computer. I offered to sell them software.

I worried theywould realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead theysaid, we’re not quite ready, come see us in a month. Which was a good thingbecause we hadn’t written the software yet.

From that momentI worked day and night on the extra credit project that marked the end of mycollege education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

What I rememberabove all about Harvard, was being in the midst of so much energy andintelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes evendiscouraging but always challenging.

It was anamazing privilege and though I left early, I was transformed by my years atHarvard, the friendships I made and the ideas I worked on.

But taking aserious look back, I do have one big regret.

I left Harvardwith no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world, appallingdisparities of health and wealth, and opportunity, that condemn millions ofpeople to lives of despair.

I learned a lothere at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposureto the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity’sgreatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries areapplied to reduce inequity.

Whether throughdemocracy, strong public education, quality healthcare or broad economicopportunity, reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campusknowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educationalopportunities here in this country.

And I knewnothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and diseasein developing countries. It took me decades to find out.

<p style="color:#333333;font-weight:normal;font-size:16px;l