Things are always harder than you think they're going to be.

Honour what is most beautiful about the past and build it into the promise of the future.

The poor also are willing to make, and do make, smart decisions, if you give them that opportunity.

When we deny the poor and the vulnerable their own human dignity and capacity for freedom and choice, it becomes self-denial. It becomes a denial of both our collective and individual dignity, at all levels of society.

We have to remember that the girls and the women are most isolated and violated and victimized and made invisible in those very societies where our men and our boys feel disempowered, unable to provide.

Listening is not only about waiting, but it's also learning how better to ask questions.

The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.