The only place where poverty should be is in museums.

Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That's where it will be.

Today, the concept of business is to make money. Making money is the name of the business.

I founded Grameen Bank to provide loans to those considered traditionally unbankable. Grameen Bank works with the poorest and often illiterate, providing uncollateralized micro-loans for tiny business enterprises by which they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

Soon we saw that money going to women brought much more benefit to the family than money going to the men. So we changed our policy and gave a high priority to women. As a result, now 96% of our four million borrowers in Grameen Bank are women.

People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They're not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives.

But we have created a society that does not allow opportunities for those people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities.