What’s it about?
The Life, Lessons and Rules for Success focuses on Bill Gates, one of the most influential entrepreneurs and philanthropists of our time. The book distills the mindset, habits, and guiding principles that helped him build Microsoft into a global powerhouse and later dedicate his wealth and intellect to tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. It blends biography with actionable wisdom, offering readers both inspiration and practical strategies for their own lives.
Book Review: The Life, Lessons and Rules for Success – Bill Gates
by Influential Individuals
Published: 2017
Review published: September 2025
What I Learned / My Take
1. Gates’s curiosity and love for learning were his greatest assets. From reading voraciously to asking relentless questions, he built a foundation of knowledge that fueled innovation.
2. Success didn’t come overnight. Gates’s willingness to work long hours, push through obstacles, and refine his vision shows how persistence transforms ideas into reality.
3. He embodies the value of focus: narrowing energy onto a single mission—first, putting a computer on every desk, and later, fighting global disease and poverty.
4. Gates admits to failures and mistakes, but he treats them as tuition for growth. His story is a reminder that setbacks can become stepping stones.
5. Perhaps most inspiring is his pivot from business to philanthropy: a demonstration that success is not only about wealth creation but also about using resources to improve humanity.
Memorable Quotes (Rules for Success):
- The only thing that mattered was for every win, there was a reward, and for every loss, a consequence.
- “Follow your passions.”
- While his first company, Traf-O-Data, did not go as planned, the partnership between him and Allen would bloom into one of the biggest technological companies of all time.
- He knew what he was good at from a very young age, and he wanted to pursue all those avenues with his friend, Paul Allen.
- “Patience is a key element of success.”
- “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
- “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
- People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they?
- “To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.”
- “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
- “Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.”
- “Life is not fair – get used to it!”
- “Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.”
- “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
- “I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.”
- “Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.”
- “This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.”
- The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
- “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
- “Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast, or a bridge player.”
- Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without talking about the other.
- Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.
- “Customers want high quality at low prices, and they want it now.”
- “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.”