I have come to believe, deeply and firmly, that we can create a poverty free world if we want to. I came to this conclusion not as a product of a pious dream, but as a concrete result of experience gained in the work of the Grameen Bank.

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

My vision for the future? ... a world completely free from poverty.

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.

I said peace is sometimes narrowly interpreted; it's the absence of conflict between nations or something. But peace is more inherent, more basic to human life, human beings, what we feel about each other, what we feel about life around us and what we see in our future.

If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty.

The able bodied poor don't want or need charity.... All they need is financial capital.