Yunus Microfinance Quotes

So i say, change the base! If you change the base, anybody will be as tall as anybody else! My belief is poverty is not caused by poor ppl. Poverty is caused by the system. Poverty is caused by the policies that we pursue. ~ Muhammad Yunus

The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Culture is useless unless it is constantly challenged by counter culture. People create culture; culture creates people. It is a two-way street. When people hide behind a culture, you know that's a dead culture. ~ Muhammad Yunus

I tried to make sense of the Four Books,
until love arrived,
and it all became a single syllable. ~ Yunus Emre

Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty. ~ Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

There is no room in the economic literature for people making a living through self-employment, finding way to develop goods or services that they sell directly to those who need them. But in the real world, that's what you see the poor doing everywhere. ~ Muhammad Yunus

They explained to me that the bank cannot lend money to poor people because these people are not creditworthy. ~ Muhammad Yunus

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. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Ölür ise ten ölür, canlar ölesi değil"
(Only the body dies, souls can never be slain) ~ Yunus Emre

It's very difficult when you have learned something a certain way. Not only your mind absorbs it; your eyes also are trained to see in a certain way because eyes are only as good as you've been trained to see. ~ Muhammad Yunus

The earth shall be left to no one. ~ Yunus Emre

I believe that the emphasis on curbing population growth diverts attention from the more vital issue of pursuing policies that allow the population to take care of itself. ~ Muhammad Yunus

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. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Grameen Bank was formed as an institution owned by its borrower members, who are poor women. Through its unique decision-making process, Grameen Bank has given millions of women the means to emerge from the shadows in a male-dominated society and to make something of themselves. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Thought is an errand boy, fear a mine of worries. ~ Yunus Emre

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. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Microfinance is an incredibly powerful tool ... but we must move beyond micro-hopes and micro-ambitions for women. ~ Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Women have plans for themselves, for their children, about their home, the meals. They have a Vision. A man wants to enjoy himself ... ~ Muhammad Yunus

The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size. ~ Muhammad Yunus

A university should not be an island where academics attain higher and higher levels of knowledge without sharing any of this knowledge with its neighbours. ~ Muhammad Yunus

These results stand in sharp contrast to the hype that microfinance has attracted in development policy circles. They throw cold water on models that suggest lack of access to finance is among the most important constraints that poor households face. ~ Dani Rodrik

Microfinance is an idea whose time has come. ~ Kofi Annan

Young people should think in a different way - they should be job givers not job seeker. ~ Muhammad Yunus

There is the expression of selfishness and there is the expression of selflessness - but economists or theoreticians never touched that part. They said: 'Go and become a philanthropist.' I said, 'No, I can do that in the business world, create a different kind of business - a business based on selflessness.' ~ Muhammad Yunus

The crisis is the price for the capitalist system ~ Muhammad Yunus

Making money is a happiness. And that's a great incentive. Making other people happy is a super-happiness. ~ Muhammad Yunus

I was born in 1940 in Hathazari, Chittagong, which is now part of Bangladesh. Education was always important to my parents, and with what little we had, they were able to provide an education for their children. ~ Muhammad Yunus

However, as commercialization of microfinance deepens, the proportion of female clientele of microfinance institutions will decline steadily. ~ Godwin Ehigiamusoe

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

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. ~ Muhammad Yunus

If I told you about a land of love, friend, would you follow me and come? ~ Yunus Emre

I profoundly believer, as Grammen's experience over twenty years has shown, that personal gains is not the only possible fuel for free enterprise. Social goals can replace greed as a powerful motivational force. Social-consciousness-driven enterprises can be formidable competitors for the greed-based enterprises. I believe that if we play our cards right, social-consciousness-driven enterprises can do very well in the marketplace. ~ Muhammad Yunus