For many years now, a motivational text has been circulating on the Internet, which, as indicated in the preamble, one of the richest people in the world said at his meeting with schoolchildren. We checked to see if Gates said this.

According to the popular text, Gates "believes that daily training in optimism and political correctness is creating a generation that is far from reality, and this inevitably leads to failure in the adult world." Here are 11 principles he suggests instead. Briefly they are:

Rule 1. Life is unfair, get used to it!
Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem.
Rule 3. You will not receive $60,000 per year right after school. You won't have a satellite phone in your car until you earn them.
Rule 4. Do you think the teacher is too demanding? Wait until you become the boss.
Rule 5: Serve hamburgers below your dignity. Your grandparents called it an opportunity.
Rule 6. If you get into a puddle, it’s not your parents’ fault, don’t whine, learn from your mistakes.
Rule 7. Before you were born, your parents were not as boring as they are now, but they became them by paying your bills. Before you start saving the world from your parents' generation, clean out the toilet in your own room.
Rule 8. Your school may have done away with the division between leaders and losers, but life has not.
Rule 9. Life is not divided into semesters. You won't have summer holidays.
Rule 10: Television is not real life. In reality, people usually have to go to work rather than sit at a cafe table.
Rule 11. Be courteous to nerds and nerds. It is possible that you will soon work for one of them.

Bill Gates' rules have become widespread on the Internet as one list (“Komsomolskaya Pravda”, "Belarusian partisan", Obozrevatel), and in the form of individual quotes (“Focus", "Quotes.info", "My landmark"). As is often the case with motivational texts, the selection is very popular in social networks. It is also known in the West - for example, it is found on the websites of prestigious American universities. In the East, in particular in India, the selection was included in some biographical books about Bill Gates.

Firstly, even a cursory study of the original text reveals a number of gross errors that have penetrated into the Russian translation. For example, in the fourth rule, “wait till you get a boss” means “until you have a boss,” and not “when you become a boss.” The word closet, which appears in the tenth rule, means “closet”, not “toilet”. Well, “you'll end up working for one” from the last rule is correctly translated as “you will eventually work for one of them,” and not “soon.”

Microsoft co-founder, entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates has never shied away from sharing the secrets of his success. His book "Business at the speed of thought" at one time it became a bestseller and continues to be published in high circulations. He also has advice on raising teenagers - for example, a list of three principles, which Gates spoke about in various interview and which his parents were guided by:

1. Engage in charity and social work, involving children in these activities.
2. Give children enough independence.
3. Teach your child not to give up when faced with failure.

However, there is no similar list of advice directly to teenagers, and even at least somewhat similar to the selection we are interested in, neither in the interviews nor in Gates’ books. On some sites and in books indicated even a specific school in the Californian town of Visalia, where Gates allegedly read his inspiring speech to graduates. But the school leadership at one time refuted information about such an event.

Moreover, the earliest surviving publications of a collection of rules on the Internet do not contain any mention of the American billionaire. This is, in particular, publication journalist Ann Landers in the Atlanta Constitution dated September 21, 1997, a little later reprinted on the Internet. In May 2000, a similar article by Landers was published in Chicago Tribune. If you look closely, you will notice that some of the rules in the list do not coincide with the selection we are considering, and there are 10 of them in total. The first attribution of the rules to Bill Gates took place, apparently, in July 2000 in a periodical The Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

Who then is the author of this motivating text? As it turns out, it was once written by a conservative politician and journalist from Wisconsin Charles Sykes. For the first time, “Some rules that children will not be taught at school” appeared in the newspaper San Diego Union Tribune September 19, 1996, and there were 14 of these principles - hence some discrepancies between reprints. Some sources are incorrect claimthat the selection was included in his book 1995 "Dumbing Our Children: Why American Children Are Complacent But Can't Read, Write, or Add Numbers." In fact, Sykes continued to publish the selection only in newspapers until 2007, when his book "50 Rules Children Won't Be Taught in School: Real Antidotes to a Shallow Education." But Bill Gates has nothing to do with these principles.