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

They said, we have education, but what about jobs? So I started telling them, you should be taking a pledge, and the pledge should be: 'I'm not a job seeker; I'm a job giver.' Prepare yourself to be a job giver.

Poverty is unnecessary.

This is not charity. This is business: business with a social objective, which is to help people get out of poverty.

Health care can be made more affordable for the poor without requiring major new scientific developments, just the smart application of current technologies. We have seen a $25 incubator and diagnostic instruments that are built tough, cheap, and reusable for the developing world.

...poor people are just as human as anyone else. They have just as much potential as anyone.

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