Poor people always pay back their loans. [...] It is us, the designers of institutions and rules, who keep creating trouble for them.

We have done some of these in Bangladesh. Whenever I see a problem, I immediately go and create a company. That's what I did all my life.

Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.

Credit is a human right that should be treated as a human right. If credit can be accepted as a human right, then all other human rights will be easier to establish.

What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.

I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.

When you get a mobile phone it is almost like having a card to get you out of poverty in a couple of years.