The most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It’s not academic for me.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

At first, I was called a quack, a charlatan, and worse, year after year, in Australia, England and the United States, by men who simply refused to believe that a nurse from ‚the bush‘ could devise a treatment which succeeded where they had failed.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

It’s extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can’t get a job on a ship unless you have seaman’s paper’s, and you can’t get seaman’s papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

I look after people.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog, but I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia – that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.

When people are connected, we can just do some great things. They have the opportunity to get access to jobs, education, health, communications. We have the opportunity to bring the people we care about closer to us. It really makes a big difference.

Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

I love all kinds of insects, and I’ve heard Australia has some really interesting bugs.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

How can we help President Obama?

When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‚I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,‘ you just scream.

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

In the middle of a recession, where we’re just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Well, we know that people in Australia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it’s fun to be able to deliver it.

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.