The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world. All we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them!

— Muhammad Yunus

The process of breaking down fear was always my greatest challenge, and it was made easier by the careful work and gentle voices of my female workers.

— 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 system we have built refuses to recognize people. Only credit cards are recognized. Drivers' licenses are recognized. But not people. People haven't any use for faces anymore, it seems. They are busy looking at your credit card, your driver's license, your social security number. If a driver's license is more reliable than the face I wear, then why do I have a face?

— Muhammad Yunus

.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

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

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

— Muhammad Yunus

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

To overcome poverty and the flaws of the economic crisis in our society, we need to envision our social life. We have to free our mind, imagine what has never happened before and write social fiction. We need to imagine things to make them happen. If you don't imagine, it will never happen.

— Muhammad Yunus

Truly affordable but high-quality health care tools and services are the only means by which quality health care can be provided to all.

— Muhammad Yunus