I’m encouraging young people to become social business entrepreneurs and contribute to the world, rather than just making money. Making money is no fun. Contributing to and changing the world is a lot more fun. Muhammad Yunus More Quotes by Muhammad Yunus More Quotes From Muhammad Yunus I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation. Muhammad Yunus teaching country people I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over. Muhammad Yunus money people bankers 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 technology moon goodbye What we are trying to do is to create a social business in Bangladesh, a joint venture to create restaurants for common people. Good, healthy food at affordable prices so that people don't have to opt for food that is unhealthy and unhygienic. Muhammad Yunus healthy trying people Unprecedented technological capabilities combined with unlimited human creativity have given us tremendous power to take on intractable problems like poverty, unemployment, disease, and environmental degradation. Our challenge is to translate this extraordinary potential into meaningful change. Muhammad Yunus creativity challenges meaningful 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. Muhammad Yunus support opportunity people My experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith; an unshakable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue. Muhammad Yunus creativity business believe Today, if you look at financial systems around the globe, more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people, more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame. Muhammad Yunus gambling population people Changes are products of intensive efforts. Muhammad Yunus effort products To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on. Muhammad Yunus flower perfect people Human beings are much bigger than just making money. Muhammad Yunus making-money bigger humans 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. Muhammad Yunus business dream believe ..things are never as complicated as they seem. It is only our arrogance that prompts us to find unnecessarily complicated answers to simple problems. Muhammad Yunus arrogance simple answers 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 making-money poverty belief I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked. Muhammad Yunus money names people I am proposing to create another kind of business, based on "selflessness" that is in all of us. I am calling it social business. Muhammad Yunus poverty kind calling 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. Muhammad Yunus greatness would-be helping Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor. Muhammad Yunus issues distance powerful Capitalism has been interpreted as an exclusively profit-centric human engagement. Some have been saying to bring people and planet into the picture. This can be a good change, but it is still not fully operationalized. Are you putting people, planet and profit at the same level? Muhammad Yunus engagement levels people I'm sure everything has a bearing on what I'm doing. My family is a lower-middle-class family, there's lots of children, seven brothers, two sisters grew up together, fighting with each other, went to school. My mother went to school up to 4th grade. My father went to school up to 8th grade. So that's about the education level we had in the family. Muhammad Yunus brother mother children
