..things are never as complicated as they seem. It is only our arrogance that prompts us to find unnecessarily complicated answers to simple problems.
The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability.
Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn't billions of dollars people needed right away.
Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That's where it will be.
Money begets money. If you don't have that, you wait around to be hired by somebody at the mercy of others. If you have that money in your hand, you desperately try to make the best use of it and move ahead. And that's generating income for yourself.
I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation.
Business money is limitless.
I wanted to give money to people like this woman so that they would be free from the moneylenders to sell their product at the price which the markets gave them - which was much higher than what the trader was giving them.
The moment you say microfinance everybody wants to help you.
I began my work in the '70s, teaching at a university in Bangladesh, and these economic theories that I had learned stopped ringing true for me, as I saw the misery of people living all around me.
I have always said that human beings are multidimensional beings. Their happiness comes from many sources, not, as our current economic framework assumes, just from making money.
The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world. All we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them!
Credit markets were originally created to serve human needs; to provide businesses and individuals with capital to start or expand businesses or fulfill other financial needs.
Changes are products of intensive efforts.
The Grameen clinics prove that a medical system 'for the poor' can be almost entirely self-supporting, and we hope we can make it fully self sufficient so we can expand it across Bangladesh.
If the basic structure of Grameen is changed, the worry is that the poor women who are the rightful owners of the bank will be disenfranchised.
The challenge I set before anyone who condemns private-sector business is this: If you are a socially conscious person, why don't you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?
We prepare our students for jobs and careers, but we don't teach them to think as individuals about what kind of world they would create.
The Grameen Bank Ordinance with amendments up to 2008 is a beautiful legal structure for the fulfillment of the ideals and objectives of the bank. Any change in this structure will be devastating for the bank.
While technology is important, it's what we do with it that truly matters.
The process of breaking down fear was always my greatest challenge and it was made easier by the careful work and gentle voices of my female workers.
...one cannot but wonder how an environment can make people despair and sit idle and then, by changing the conditions, one can transform the same people into matchless performers.
In my experience, poor people are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.
Making money is a happiness. And that's a great incentive. Making other people happy is a super-happiness.
I believe that the emphasis on curbing population growth diverts attention from the more vital issue of pursuing policies that allow the population to take care of itself.
I thought, if you can become an angel for 27 dollars. It would be fun to do more of it
I began my career as an economics professor but became frustrated because the economic theories I taught in the classroom didn't have any meaning in the lives of poor people I saw all around me. I decided to turn away from the textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence.
The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size.
Like navigation markings in unknown waters, definitions of poverty need to be distinctive and unambiguous. A definition that is not precise is as bad as no definition at all.
A university should not be an island where academics attain higher and higher levels of knowledge without sharing any of this knowledge with its neighbours.
