Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
The world needs banking but it does not need banks.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that while the functions of banking are essential for society, the traditional bank institutions may not be necessary.
Bill Gates' quote highlights the distinction between the services that banks provide and the traditional banking institutions themselves. He argues that the financial services are important for the functioning of the economy, but new technologies and innovations may be able to fulfill these roles without relying on the conventional banking structure, implying a need for change in how we consider financial services in the modern world.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the future of finance during a seminar on fintech.
More from Bill Gates
All quotes βThe Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.
Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.
What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives.
It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth. We know that investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all of us.
Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices.
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.