Muhammad Yunus

...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.

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.

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.

To overcome poverty and the flaws of the economic crisis in our society, we need to envision our social life. We have to free our mind, imagine what has never happened before and write social fiction. We need to imagine things to make them happen. If you don't imagine, it will never happen.

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society.

Peace should be understood in a human way - in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

Access to quality education has enabled me to reach far beyond the Bangladeshi village I grew up in.

The developing world is full of entrepreneurs and visionaries, who with access to education, equity and credit would play a key role in developing the economic situations in their countries.

I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked.

I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.

Civilization has given us enormous successes: going to the moon, technology. But then this is the civilisation that took us to debt, environmental crisis, every single crisis. We need a civilization where we say goodbye to these things.

While technology is important, it's what we do with it that truly matters.

Engaging in social business is beneficial to a company because it leverages on business competencies to address social issues, involves one-time investment with sustainable results, and produces other positive effects such as employee motivation and improved organizational culture.

Truly affordable but high-quality health care tools and services are the only means by which quality health care can be provided to all.

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.

Poverty is unnecessary.

Today, if you look at financial systems around the globe, more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people, more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame.