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Who really said it

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten

Written by Bill Gates Born 1955 · American software entrepreneur, Microsoft co-founder and author
Verified In copyright

This one is real, and it is unusually well documented. Quote Investigator ↗ cites the sentence to the Afterword of the second, revised edition of Gates’s The Road Ahead (Penguin Books, 1996), quote page 316, where it runs on: “I’m guilty of this myself.” What Gates did not do is invent the thought — the same maxim was already in print, credited to nobody, in 1965.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten” Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), Afterword, p. 316: "People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten." Gates was restating a maxim already documented in 1965. Verified at Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Bill Gates (with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson) and Penguin Books). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Bill Gates — Microsoft co-founder, author and philanthropist. Theme: "People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work
The Road Ahead
Edition
Second edition, “completely revised and up-to-date” — Penguin Books, 1996 (first published by Viking Penguin, 24 November 1995)
Location
Afterword, quote page 316
Written with
Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten. I’m guilty of this myself. The Road Ahead, Afterword (1996)

As transcribed by Quote Investigator from page 316 of the second edition. The second sentence is almost always dropped when the line is quoted, which turns a self-criticism into a piece of general wisdom.

Quote Investigator's citation: The Road Ahead, Afterword, page 316

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ pins the exact wording to a specific place: “1996, The Road Ahead by Bill Gates with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson, Second Edition, Section: Afterword, Quote Page 316, Penguin Books, New York.” The sentence it transcribes is the one on this page, followed by “I’m guilty of this myself.”
  • A second, independent sourced-quotation database agrees. WIST ↗ carries the identical wording and cites it to The Road Ahead, “Afterword” (1996 ed.), noting that similar formulations go back to the 1960s and linking to Quote Investigator for them.
  • The edition history checks out. Wikipedia’s article on the book ↗ records a Viking Penguin hardback on 24 November 1995 and a Penguin Books paperback in October 1996 billed “completely revised and up-to-date” — the revision prompted by how badly the hardback had underrated the internet, which is exactly what the Afterword sentence is about. The Internet Archive holds a 1996 Penguin printing ↗; we could not read its interior from here, so the page number above rests on Quote Investigator’s citation rather than our own inspection of a scan.
  • One honest gap: this line is not listed on Wikiquote’s Bill Gates page ↗ in any section — not sourced, not attributed, not misattributed. Its absence there is neither support nor contradiction; the sourcing here comes from Quote Investigator and WIST.
In copyright

The Road Ahead was first published in 1995 and this Afterword appeared in the revised second edition of 1996 — comfortably inside copyright in the United States. The sentence is quoted here in full for identification and comment; the book itself remains the property of its authors and publisher.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually gets misattributed here

Unusually for a Bill Gates quotation, the wording is his. What gets misattributed is the idea — Gates is constantly credited with coining a maxim he was quoting, and the same thought circulates under at least three other names.

Bill Gates Wrote it, didn’t originate it

Quote Investigator ↗ gives the earliest known appearance as J. C. R. Licklider’s Libraries of the Future (MIT Press, 1965), page 17, where it is introduced as “a modern maxim” — Licklider explicitly did not claim it as his own.

Roy Amara (“Amara’s law”) Later variant

The best-known rival form — “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run” — carries Roy Amara ↗’s name. But Quote Investigator’s earliest citation linking Amara to the notion is a 1983 Gannett News Service interview, and QI concludes Amara did not originate the saying.

Arthur C. Clarke Weak evidence

Clarke is often named as the source. Quote Investigator examined the claim and found the evidence linking him to this specific expression weak — his 1951 remark was about daring prophecies coming to seem laughably conservative, a different point. See the QI analysis ↗.

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years…” Different book

That longer variant is real Gates too, but it is not this sentence and not this book: Quote Investigator cites it to Business @ the Speed of Thought (Warner Books, 1999), chapter 4, page 69. It is habitually reprinted as though it came from The Road Ahead ↗.

Bill Gates wrote this exact sentence in the 1996 revised edition of The Road Ahead — about his own failure to see the internet coming. He was restating a maxim that Quote Investigator ↗ finds already in print, credited to no one, in 1965.

Context

Why he wrote it

The line is a confession as much as an observation. When The Road Ahead first appeared in hardback in November 1995, published by Viking Penguin, it treated the internet as one precursor among several to the “information highway” Gates expected to arrive. That call aged badly, fast. The following year Penguin Books issued a paperback billed as “completely revised and up-to-date ↗,” rewritten around the internet Gates had underweighted.

The sentence sits in that revised edition’s Afterword, and the clause most people drop is the one that gives it its point. Gates does not offer the maxim as advice for other forecasters; he offers it as the diagnosis of his own error, then adds — per Quote Investigator’s transcription ↗ — “I’m guilty of this myself.”

I’m guilty of this myself.

The older maxim behind the sentence

The shape of the idea is much older than 1996. Quote Investigator’s earliest documented instance is in J. C. R. Licklider ↗’s Libraries of the Future (MIT Press, 1965), page 17 — and Licklider presents it as common property: “A modern maxim says: ‘People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years.’” Note the different intervals: one year and five-or-ten, not two and ten.

Gates himself returned to the idea in Business @ the Speed of Thought (Warner Books, 1999), chapter 4, page 69, in a looser form: “we always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” That second phrasing is the one most often quoted online — and it is routinely, and wrongly, filed under The Road Ahead.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: overestimate / underestimatequoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation. Gives Gates's exact wording with book, edition, section and page, traces the maxim back to Licklider in 1965, and weighs the rival credits to Roy Amara and Arthur C. Clarke.
WIST Quotations: Gates, The Road Ahead, "Afterword"wist.info

An independent sourced-quotation database carrying the same line with the same citation — The Road Ahead, "Afterword" (1996 ed.) — and a pointer to Quote Investigator for the variants.
The Road Ahead (Penguin, 1996) scanarchive.org

The Internet Archive's lending scan of a 1996 Penguin printing of the book. Catalogue record: Gates, Bill, 1955–; London: Penguin, 1996; originally published London: Viking, 1995.
The Road Ahead (Gates book)en.wikipedia.org

Publication history: the Viking Penguin hardback of 24 November 1995 with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson, and the "completely revised and up-to-date" Penguin Books paperback of October 1996 that rethought the internet.
Wikiquote: Bill Gatesen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's Gates page, with sourced, attributed and misattributed sections. Worth noting that this particular line is not currently listed there in any section — the sourcing here rests on Quote Investigator and WIST.
Roy Amaraen.wikipedia.org

The futurist (1925–2007), president of the Institute for the Future, whose name is attached to the best-known rival version — "Amara's law" — of the same short-run / long-run observation.

About the author

Bill Gates

Bill Gates

Born 1955 · Microsoft co-founder, author and philanthropist

William Henry Gates III co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and served as its chief executive for 25 years before moving to chief software architect and, later, stepping back from the company’s day-to-day running. Alongside the software career he became a bestselling business writer: The Road Ahead (1995, revised 1996), Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999), and later books on climate and pandemics. Since the 2000s his principal work has been the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this

Bill Gates, with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson, The Road Ahead, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), Afterword, 316 — citation as documented by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: People Tend To Overestimate What Can Be Done In One Year And To Underestimate What Can Be Done In Five Or Ten Years,” 3 January 2019.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/people-often-overestimate-what-will-happen-in-the-next-two/

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