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

I avoid grandiose plans. I start with a small piece that I can do. I go to the root of the problem and then work around it. It's building brick by brick.

Civilization has given us enormous successes: going to the moon, technology. But then this is the civilisation that took us to debt, environmental crisis, every single crisis. We need a civilization where we say goodbye to these things.

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

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

Each of us has much more hidden inside us than we have had a chance to explore. Unless we create an environment that enables us to discover the limits of our potential, we will never know what we have inside of us.

What good does the theory [of economics] do if it is not working for people?