Such wholesome words from a man that has everything. As a Serbian proverb says: “Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.”... applies perfectly to Gates.
Fear nothing."
But note that "noble" isn't really the right translation for "plemenit" (despite what Google translate might tell you) -- it's closer in meaning to "selfless" or "generous" (which you could argue are noble attributes, but "noble" has certain connotations in English that "plemenit" doesn't).
But to me it still doesn't sound right. I asked my mom (native Serbian speaker) and she said she's not heard of it as a proverb, and some Googling reveals that native Serbians are confused why foreigners seem to attribute it to us[1]. I also weirdly found a lot of questions on Quora and Yahoo answers asking for people to translate it to Serbian -- which explains why the proverb sounds slightly strange when read in Serbian. My guess is that this is actually some recent English proverb which someone decided to attribute to us (though it is neat that "zemlje" and "zvezda" do have a certain kind of rhyme).
"Bolje vrabac u ruci, nego golub na grani" means "better to have a sparrow in your hand than a pidgeon in a tree." Far less poetic than the native English bird-holding proverb "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" (which sounds strange when translated to Serbian as well -- "ptica u ruci vredi dve ptice u šumi", despite the fact it happens to rhyme).
Proverbs and sayings have a specific kind of poetry in their native language which doesn't survive translation. It seems much more likely to me that it was simply misattributed.
(I also think this supposed saying is quite hokey and dumb. The earth is as much 'made of stars' as we are.)