“In 1976 I lent money to poor people and it was a great experience; and I thought “If I can make people happy, why shouldn’t I do it more? And so I decided to found Grameen Bank”

“In 2008 we created Grameen America in the same way we act in Bangla Desh. And it worked beautiful. We were working for poor people in NYC and they payed back every penny”

“Today, even in this financial crisis, microcredit bank of Grameen Bank is working fine”

“We decided to focus on children so that 100% of children of Grameen families could receive education; we are very happy because it is the first time it happens in history”

 “When people ask me why people are poor, I answer people are poor not because there is something missing in them but because there is something missing in the way society works. Society has failed to provide them with the basis on which to grow and they have never had the chance to improve their situation.”

“2008, the year of financial crisis, was also the year of many other crisis: the food crisis, the energy crisis, the environmental crisis, the social crisis… but these crisis are not individual crisis but different manifestations of the same crisis: the failure of the current economic framework”

“We need a new kind of financial structure open to everybody, so that no one is discriminated. That’s what we do in Grameen Bank”

 “Millions of people die every day around the world but they don’t need a doctor, they need our organization and change of minds; economic and social models must change”

“Crisis gives us an opportunity; this is the best time to fix the system and, especially, the concept of business: we need to change from conventional business to social business”

“In social business you are not doing business for yourself but trying to solve the problems of the world, conceiving it as a multidimensional being, not as an individual being. In this kind of business investors don’t get profit money, they just recoup their investment”

“Technology is like a car: it is the vehicle but it doesn’t drive you anywhere; the one who decides it, it is the driver, and business people are the drivers in social economy”

“If we give poor people the opportunity to create businesses to solve social problems, we will be amazed of how many ideas come up”

“There is no reason why nobody should be poor and I hope one day we can create a museum for the poor, so that children can ask themselves how poverty existed for so many years and we accepted it”.