We can remove poverty from the surface of the earth only if we can redesign our institutions - like the banking institutions, and other institutions; if we redesign our policies, if we look back on our concepts, so that we have a different idea of poor people.

Poverty is not created by poor people. It is produced by our failure to create institutions to support human capabilities.

Like navigation markings in unknown waters, definitions of poverty need to be distinctive and unambiguous. A definition that is not precise is as bad as no definition at all.

People should wake up in the morning and say 'I am not a job seeker, I am a job-creator.

What is entrepreneurship, after all? Bigness is not the issue. Poor people are the ones who take challenges every day. The guy who sells a hot dog on the street is as much an entrepreneur as anyone else. Getting his $50 loan to start could be as difficult as finding $50 million for someone else. All people are entrepreneurs.

If I could be useful to another human being, even for a day, that would be a great thing. It would be greater than all the big thoughts I could have at the university.

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.