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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.

Muhammad Yunus

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Muhammad Yunus
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: June 28
Banker
Economist
Entrepreneur
University Teacher
Chattagram
Made
Complete
People
Amount
Needed
Bits
Names
Shocked
Money
List
Littles
Lists
Little
Total

More quotes by Muhammad Yunus

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I avoid grandiose plans. I start with a small piece that I can do. I go to the root of the problem and then work around it. It's building brick by brick.
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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.
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We believe that poverty does not belong in a civilized human society. It belongs in museums [...] A poverty-free world might not be perfect, but it would be the best approximation of the ideal.
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My vision for the future? Two things: to make credit a human right so that each individual human being will have the opportunity to take loans and implement his or her ideas so that self-exploration becomes possible. And second: that it will lead to a world where nobody has to suffer from poverty - a world completely free from poverty.
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Unprecedented technological capabilities combined with unlimited human creativity have given us tremendous power to take on intractable problems like poverty, unemployment, disease, and environmental degradation. Our challenge is to translate this extraordinary potential into meaningful change.
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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.
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Poverty is unnecessary.
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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.
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This is not charity. This is business: business with a social objective, which is to help people get out of poverty.
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The moment you say microfinance everybody wants to help you.
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So i say, change the base! If you change the base, anybody will be as tall as anybody else! My belief is poverty is not caused by poor ppl. Poverty is caused by the system. Poverty is caused by the policies that we pursue.
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I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.
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By simply capitalizing on core strengths and knowledge, companies and entrepreneurs can engage in an emerging business model that will enable them to create - and demonstrate - real, sustainable social impact in society.
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I am proposing to create another kind of business, based on selflessness that is in all of us. I am calling it social business.
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What I learned in school, what I learned in the educational part of my life. Trying to acquire a kind of a bird's eye view. You drive hard and see everything. And that's called education because now you can see everything.
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It's very difficult when you have learned something a certain way. Not only your mind absorbs it your eyes also are trained to see in a certain way because eyes are only as good as you've been trained to see.
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Capitalism has been interpreted as an exclusively profit-centric human engagement. Some have been saying to bring people and planet into the picture. This can be a good change, but it is still not fully operationalized. Are you putting people, planet and profit at the same level?
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Hunger is the worst form of deprivation of a human being. Although inability to access food is the immediate cause of hunger, the real cause in most of the incidents of hunger is lack of ability to pay for food. If we are looking for ways to end hunger then we should be looking at ways to ensure a reasonable level of income for all
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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.
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I was an economist now turning into a human being - as if these are two different things. I don't know but I did that and then I had no vision.
Muhammad Yunus