Yunus Poverty Quotes & Sayings

We have to get out of this mindset that the rich will do the business and the poor will have the charity. — Muhammad Yunus

UN studies conducted in more than forty developing countries show that the birth rate falls as women gain equality ... I believe income-earning opportunities that empower poor women ... will have more impact on curbing population growth that the current system of "encouraging" family planning practices through intimidation tactics.. Family planning should be left to the family. — Muhammad Yunus

We create institutions and policies on the basis of the way we make assumptions about us and others. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us. So we have had poor people around us. If we had believed that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have created appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world. — Muhammad Yunus

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! — Muhammad Yunus

Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That's where it will be. — Muhammad Yunus

We have done some of these in Bangladesh. Whenever I see a problem, I immediately go and create a company. That's what I did all my life. — Muhammad Yunus

My vision for the future? ... a world completely free from poverty. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

A culture that holds people back should and can be changed ... — Muhammad Yunus

What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues. — Muhammad Yunus

Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor. — Muhammad Yunus

Each individual person is very important. Each person has tremendous potential. She or he alone can influence the lives of others within the communities, nations, within and beyond her or his own time. — Muhammad Yunus

Th direct elimination of elimination of poverty should be the objective of all development aid. Development should be viewed as a human rights issue, not as a question of simply increasing the gross national product (GNP). — Muhammad Yunus

My experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith; an unshakable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue. — Muhammad Yunus

Poverty is not created by poor people. It is produced by our failure to create institutions to support human capabilities. — Muhammad Yunus

People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They're not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives. — Muhammad Yunus

Poverty is an artificial, external imposition on a human being; it is not innate in a human being. And since it is external, it can be removed. It is just a question of doing it. — Muhammad Yunus

I am proposing to create another kind of business, based on "selflessness" that is in all of us. I am calling it social business. — Muhammad Yunus

If we are looking for one single action which will enable the poor to overcome their poverty, I would go for credit. Money is power. I have been arguing that credit should be accepted as a human right. If we can come up with a system which allows everybody access to credit while ensuring excellent repayment - I can give you a guarantee that poverty will not last long. — Muhammad Yunus

I should never seek a job in my life, my mission in life is to create jobs. I am not a job seeker, I am a job giver. — Muhammad Yunus

We got rid of colonialism, we got rid of slavery, and we got rid of apartheid everyone thought each one of them was impossible. Let's take the next impossible, do it with joy and get it finished with and create a world free from poverty. Let us create the world of our choice. — Muhammad Yunus

Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair. — Muhammad Yunus

When you get a mobile phone it is almost like having a card to get you out of poverty in a couple of years. — Muhammad Yunus

In the future the question will not be, "Are people credit-worthy", but rather, "Are banks people-worthy?" — Muhammad Yunus

We can remove poverty from the surface of the earth only if we can redesign our institutions - like the banking institutions, and other institutions; if we redesign our policies, if we look back on our concepts, so that we have a different idea of poor people. — Muhammad Yunus

I think, social business is the most logical thing to do. If we had done that, we could reduce all the problems we have. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base. — Muhammad Yunus

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

Hings are never as complicated as they seem. It is only our arrogance that prompts us to find unnecessarily complicated answers to simple problems. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

This is not charity. This is business: business with a social objective, which is to help people get out of poverty. — Muhammad Yunus

What good does the theory [of economics] do if it is not working for people? — Muhammad Yunus

I founded Grameen Bank to provide loans to those considered traditionally unbankable. Grameen Bank works with the poorest and often illiterate, providing uncollateralized micro-loans for tiny business enterprises by which they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty. — Muhammad Yunus

Instead of concentrating on the war against poverty, global attention is focused on another kind of slaughter - on something that is intangible and yet being tackled by all the possible military means we can muster. And all the lofty declarations by world leaders about combatting poverty that were lauded by the General Assembly turned out to be damp squibs. — Muhammad Yunus

Policies are also to blame: the only thing that the governments and people can come up with to give to the poor people is charity. Poor people get hand outs from the state. But this is not a solution to poverty. — Muhammad Yunus

To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate.
Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on. — Muhammad Yunus

I was trained to become an economist and I finished my work and I was teaching and did my PhD so I thought I did that. I prepared myself for that kind of road. But then I realized that I had not learned enough to solve the problem of poverty. So I distanced myself from the things that I learned and tried to learn anew about people. — Muhammad Yunus

Business is about problem-solving, but it does not always have to be about maximizing profit. When I went into business, my interest was to figure out how to solve problems I see in front of me. That's why I looked at the poverty issue. I got involved in lots of things to address it, and one of them was money lending with loans and credits and savings accounts, and in the process I created Grameen Bank. So you can also have social objectives. Ask yourself these questions: Who are you? What kind of world do you want? — Muhammad Yunus

I strongly believe that we can create a poverty-free world, if we want to ... In that kind of world, [the] only place you can see poverty is in the museum. When school children will be on a tour of the poverty museum, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition to continue in a massive way. — Muhammad Yunus

The current financial crisis makes it very clears that the system that we have isn't really working, and this is the right time for us to undo things and build them in a new way. — Muhammad Yunus

Poverty is unnecessary. — Muhammad Yunus

I have come to believe, deeply and firmly, that we can create a poverty free world if we want to. I came to this conclusion not as a product of a pious dream, but as a concrete result of experience gained in the work of the Grameen Bank. — Muhammad Yunus

If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty. — Muhammad Yunus

When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences. — Muhammad Yunus

One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like. — Muhammad Yunus

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives. — Muhammad Yunus

Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. — Muhammad Yunus

Credit is a human right that should be treated as a human right. If credit can be accepted as a human right, then all other human rights will be easier to establish. — Muhammad Yunus

If you think creating a world without any poverty is impossible, let's do it. Because it is the right thing to do. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole. — Muhammad Yunus

When tiny, tiny things start happening a million times, it becomes a large thing. It lays down the foundation of a strong economic base. With women participating in building this economic base, it becomes the foundation for better social and economic future ... — Muhammad Yunus

The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability. — Muhammad Yunus

I'm encouraging young people to become social business entrepreneurs and contribute to the world, rather than just making money. Making money is no fun. Contributing to and changing the world is a lot more fun. — Muhammad Yunus

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. — Muhammad Yunus

The only place where poverty should be is in museums. — Muhammad Yunus