196 Quotes by Muhammad Yunus

The poor,” I said, “are very creative. They know how to earn a living and how to change their lives.

By the time the war was over, Bangladesh was a devastated country. The economy was shattered. Millions of people needed to be rehabilitated. I knew that I had to return home and participate in the work of nation building. I thought I owed it to myself.

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.

In a bird’s eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don’t have that advantage of looking at everything.

All they need is opportunity.

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.

Analyses of the causes of poverty focus largely on why some countries are poor rather than on why certain segments of the population live below the poverty line.

If we are looking for one single action which will enable the poor to overcome their poverty, I would focus on credit.

In the future the question will not be, “Are people credit-worthy”, but rather, “Are banks people-worthy?”