"Rich people spend a lot more money on their own problems, like baldness, than they do to fight malaria."
Bill Gates, criticising Italy’s low levels of foreign aid in 2009, and blaming prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is rumoured to have undergone a hair transplant (Time, February 15)
"Parents who studied in Marathi-medium schools are sending their kids to English-medium ones and supporting Thackeray!"
Kumar Ketkar, editor of Loksatta newspaper on the targeting of Shah Rukh Khan and his movie My Name is Khan by Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray (Outlook, February 15)
"We have 41 (exam) boards in the country. Why should one state have four boards? We should break the walls and prepare our children for the future. We should set up a system of core curriculum in respect of professional courses. There should be a core curriculum for maths and science."
Kapil Sibal, Union HRD minister, addressing a meeting of the Council of Boards of Secondary Education (February 16)
"The ABC of Indian media roughly translates as Advertising, Bollywood and Corporate power."
P. Sainath, well-known columnist and author (The Hindu, February 17)
"In India, a licence raj approach has ensured a capacity constraint which artificially magnifies the value of becoming a university. This is all about demand and supply. You increase the supply and this value disappears."
Gopal Jain, managing director, Gaja Capital Partners (Business Today, February 21)
"Economic reforms are not about rich guys buying fancy cars but about creating access to healthcare, power, education, training and jobs."
Manish Sabharwal, chairman of Teamlease Services (Mint, February 25)
"I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."
Barack Obama, US President to ABC News