...culture is useless unless it is constantly challenged by counter culture. People create culture; culture creates people. It is a two-way street. When people hide behind a culture, you know that's a dead culture.

Money begets money. If you don't have that, you wait around to be hired by somebody at the mercy of others. If you have that money in your hand, you desperately try to make the best use of it and move ahead. And that's generating income for yourself.

I had no idea that I would ever get involved with something like lending money to poor people, given the circumstances in which I was working in Bangladesh.

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

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

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

If we are looking for one single action which will enable the poor to overcome their poverty, I would focus on credit