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• One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.
  • "Interview with Prof. Muhammad Yunus" Australian Broadcasting Corporation (25 March 1997)

• If you are born into a poor family, if you are a woman you have seen the worst of poverty. In a cultural way in the families in Bangladesh it's the women who eats last. So if you have a scarcity in the family ... she misses out so everything comes in the raw deal for her. So , given a chance she works very hard to make a change to improve her life. And by training she is the most efficient manager of scarce resources. Because with the little resource she has, she has to stretch it as much as she can to look after the children, look after the family and everything else..unlike men - men want to enjoy right away. Whatever he got, whatever tiny bit of thing he got he doesn't care for much what's coming up.
  • "Interview with Prof. Muhammad Yunus" Australian Broadcasting Corporation (25 March 1997)

• 'I believe that "government", as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a "Grameenized private sector", a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.'
  • Autobiography : Banker to the Poor (2001)

• To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.
  • Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (2007)

• Poor people always pay back their loans. It's us, the creators of institutions and rules, who keep creating trouble for them.
  • Grameen Bank II: Designed to Open New Possibilities (2002)

• 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.
  • "Eliminating Poverty Through Market-Based Social Entrepreneurship" in Global Urban Development Magazine (May 2005)

• Poverty has been created by the economic and social system that we have designed for the world. It is the institutions that we have built, and feel so proud of, which created poverty.them.
  • "Eliminating Poverty Through Market-Based Social Entrepreneurship" in Global Urban Development Magazine (May 2005)

• I will not spend the money for myself. I will rather spend it in special business on a no-profit-no-loss policy. We will also establish an eye hospital where even beggars will be given treatment at the cost of Taka 10-20.
  • The Daily Star (14 October 2006)

• We will make yogurt with all kinds of nutritious elements. We want to provide nutrition to the poor and children.
  • The Daily Star (14 October 2006)

• All human beings have an innate skill — survival skill. The fact that poor are still alive is a proof of their ability to survive. We do not need to teach them how to survive. They know this already.
  • Profile at North American Bangladesh Info Center