Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn't billions of dollars people needed right away.

In a bird's eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don't have that advantage of looking at everything.

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.

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

The oneness of human beings is the basic ethical thread that holds us together.

Some people think that poor people are lazy. Actually, it takes a lot of work to survive when you are dirt-poor.

...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.