From Bill Gates

"I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world - the appalling disparities of health and wealth and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement."

(excerpt from Bill Gates' Commencement speech at Harvard University, 2007)