Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
Bill GatesRead
Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the disparity in how we perceive threats from animals like mosquitoes and sharks.
Bill Gates points out the irony in our societal focus on certain dangerous animals, such as sharks, while downplaying the significant threat posed by mosquitoes, which are responsible for far more deaths. Despite sharks causing fewer human fatalities, they attract much more media attention, showing a misalignment in public awareness and understanding of risks posed by different species.
Themes
MosquitoesSharksRiskPerceptionSafety
In practice
Example use cases
In a public health seminar discussing vector-borne diseases, this quote can illustrate the need for more awareness about mosquito-borne illnesses.
More from Bill Gates
All quotes βThe Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
Bill GatesRead
With the states release today of a set of clear and consistent academic standards, our nation is one step closer to supporting effective teaching in every classroom, charting a path to college and careers for all students, and developing the tools to help all children stay motivated and engaged in their own education. The more states that adopt these college and career based standards, the closer we will be to sharing innovation across state borders and becoming more competitive as a country.
Bill GatesRead
About three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
Bill GatesRead
Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.
Bill GatesRead
These four policy prescriptions - strengthening educational opportunities, revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, increasing federal funding for basic scientific research, and providing incentives for private-sector R&D - should in my view be top priorities as Congress and the Administration consider how to maintain the nation's leadership in science, technology, and innovation.
Bill GatesRead
Similar quotes
I take no pleasure in the fact that the scientific predictions Iβve relayed to popular audiences turn out to be true.
Al GoreRead
So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.
Arthur EddingtonRead
It is interesting thus to follow the intellectual truths of analysis in the phenomena of nature. This correspondence, of which the system of the world will offer us numerous examples, makes one of the greatest charms attached to mathematical speculations.
Pierre-Simon LaplaceRead
Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on earth. It is hard to think of a more dependable or enduring occupation, harder still to imagine any future events leading to its extinction.
Lewis ThomasRead
Unlike science, creationism cannot predict anything, and it cannot provide satisfactory answers about the past.
Bill NyeRead
[Bacteria] have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon that ... allows bacteria to be multicellular. In the spirit of TED they're doing things together because it makes a difference.
Bonnie BasslerRead