Of course you can do it. It doesn't require brilliance. It's just giving yourself permission and then being persistent. Persistent in seeing the problem or opportunity and persistent in thinking about it until you have come up with some interesting ideas that might change the pattern. It's really a mindset, not anything in the objective world - that is the problem.

The most critical variable [to becoming a change-maker] is one's willingness to give oneself permission. To break the mental chains that make us small because everyone tells us we cannot.

The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is stuck & to provide new ways to get it unstuck.

If everyone is a changemaker, there's no way a problem can outrun a solution

Public service and respect for ideas is a recurrent theme in both the American and Australian sides of my family.

We started Ashoka here in India with a simple idea: that you needed social entrepreneurs to deal with problems that don't fit the business paradigm.

Listening is understanding. The skill of empathy is a must to be able to listen...One can listen better if one sees the whole.