Jacqueline novogratz quotes

When I first went to Africa, I thought that I was personally going to save the continent, if not the world.

In today's world, the elites are growing even more comfortable with one another across national lines, yet at the same time, less comfortable with low-income people who share their nationality. How we create those bonds of community that are truly global as well as national is one of our generation's great challenges.

The time for us to begin innovating and looking for new solutions is now.

Freedom ultimately is dignity. And dignity, not income, is the opposite of poverty.

After all this atrocity, this is how human beings really pray.

If there's one value that is immutable, it's integrity or respect, for others and for yourself.

Africa can stun you in an instant. It can throw floods and drought and disease at you, sometimes all at the same time. In the next moment, it will tease you with its magnificent beauty, so even if you don't forget, you can find a way to forgive. Ultimately, it keeps you coming back for more.

Being poor doesn't mean being ordinary.

Very small investments can release the infinite potential that lies in all of us.

Freedom is what beauty feels like when it can most express itself.

My whole life has been spent with people who have taken every knock in the world. No advantages. Yet they greet you with a big smile, they give you what they have, and they keep coming back. They are the fighters.

All people deserve access to health at prices they can afford.

We are connected to each other not only as humans, but to every living thing on the planet.

Don't let people tell you to do it this way. You are on the verge of figuring out hybrid models -- with companies and nonprofits, markets, government, crowd-sourced philanthropy. The capitalist system as we know it is not working.

Four billion people on Earth make less than four dollars a day.

What we call people so often distances us from them, and makes them little.

Human beings want to see each other. We want to be heard by each other.

Every day we have a choice. We can take the easier road, the more cynical road, which is a road sometimes based on a dream of a past that never was, fear of each other, distancing and blame, or we can take the much more difficult path, the road of transformation, transcendence, compassion, and love, but also accountability and justice.

If indeed we can create systems that allow individuals to access goods and services like health and housing and energy and water, in a way that they can afford, they'll all have greater choice, greater opportunity, greater dignity.

Human beings tend not to spend money on health preventionally. We tend to spend it on top treatment.

People have to understand that unless social enterprise is experimental, it will not succeed in making a difference.

It's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share.

The only way we really create change is to enter any situation with the humility to listen and to recognize the world as it is, and then the audacity to dream what it could be.

Nothing important happens in life without a cost.

Our lives are so short. And our time on this planet is so precious. All we have is each other.

There are 60 million generators in Nigeria. The generator owners and distributors have a strong incentive to not encourage the distribution of solar and other alternative energies, even though it's better for the country, it's better for people. As a world, we've got to get more serious about confronting those obstacles. This knows no culture, no race, no ethnicity.

Your job is not to be perfect, your job is only to be human.

When we were walking through the narrow alleys [of the Mathare Valley slums], it was literally impossible not to step in the raw sewage and the garbage alongside the little homes. But at the same time it was also impossible not to see the human vitality, the aspiration and the ambition of the people who live there.

Traditional charity and aid are never going to solve the problems of poverty.

I have also been touched by the dark side of power and leadership.

Monsters will always exist. There's one inside each of us. But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other.

What is the cost of not daring? What is the cost of not trying?

When people gain income, they gain choice, and that is fundamental to dignity.

I wrote 'The Blue Sweater' to inspire more people to become engaged in working to solve the problems of global poverty.

We often don't realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.

Honour what is most beautiful about the past and build it into the promise of the future.

On the one hand, I loved being a banker. I loved how numbers could tell a story and how you can invest in ideas and see them translate into products and services and create jobs. What I didn't like, particularly where I was working in Brazil during the debt crisis of the early '80s, was how the poor were excluded from the banking system. I made the decision to try and experiment with whether we could use the tools of banking to extend the benefits of the economy to the poor.

I was going to save the world, and I thought I would start with the African continent.

Our actions - and inaction - touch people every day, people we may never know and never meet.

You should focus on being more interested than interesting.

There are probably no more market-oriented individuals on the planet, than low income people.

We have to remember that the girls and the women are most isolated and violated and victimized and made invisible in those very societies where our men and our boys feel disempowered, unable to provide.

Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.

Philanthropy is no longer about writing a check for $10,000 to the opera.

People really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions.

My dream is to find individuals who take financial resources and convert them into changing the world in the most positive ways.

I believe the government should ensure all children are provided with a good education.

The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.

When systems are broken, it's an opportunity for invention and innovation.

There are cases where government-to-government aid actually has worked. Look at the eradication of smallpox and the near eradication of polio. But these are really top down solutions that require government-to-government support and aid.

Things are always harder than you think they're going to be.

By going from the bottom-up again, we see where successes work, and you can also see where the status quo can be the biggest obstacle or roadblock to success. The kind of entrepreneurs in whom we need to invest are the kind who are willing to fight that status quo, bureaucracy, complacency, and corruption.

A sustainable world means working together to create prosperity for all.

We can send people to the Moon; we can see if there's life on Mars - why can't we get $5 [mosquito] nets to 500 million people?

To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.

Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it's in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all and the foundation for our collective survival.

I've heard it said that the most dangerous animal on the planet is the adolescent male.

I think I still have a great sense of adventure and trust, and am surprisingly idealistic given all the horrible things I've seen since I was 25. I think how I have changed is that I have a much deeper understanding of the dark forces in the world, of power.

We need moral leadership and courage in our world.

I have seen that traditional approaches to charity and aid don't solve problems of poverty. In fact, too often they create dependence.

There is power in creating a small model, and then you can create an alliance of other small models.

I still feel that the kind of leader I want to be is one that spends time understanding our work in a way that allows me to translate it for policymakers and people who have real access to resources.

Girls and women are most victimised in societies where boys and men are disempowered.

Africans didn't want saving, thank you very much, least of all not by me.

We need leaders, we ourselves need to lead from a place that has the audacity to believe that we ourselves can extend the fundamental assumption that all men are created equal to every, man woman and child on this planet. And we need the humility to recognize that we cannot do it alone.

The human spirit is extraordinary. If we give the 3 billion people who live in poverty the opportunity to change their lives, they will. For too long, we've looked at needing to "save" these people - with an emphasis on "these people" - rather than removing the constraints keeping them from solving their own problems.

How you see where you are always depends on where you've been.

When we deny the poor and the vulnerable their own human dignity and capacity for freedom and choice, it becomes self-denial. It becomes a denial of both our collective and individual dignity, at all levels of society.

So many low income people have seen so many failed promises broken and seen so many quacks and sporadic medicines offered to them that building trust takes a lot of time, takes a lot of patience.

Listening is not only about waiting, but it's also learning how better to ask questions.

One of the first things that surprised me in a positive, wonderfully positive way, is that this works - patient capital works.

The poor also are willing to make, and do make, smart decisions, if you give them that opportunity.

I'm relentless in that I deeply believe in people.

Failure can be an incredibly motivating force.

I finally understood: In order to contribute to Africa, I would have to know myself better and be clearer about my goals. I would have to be ready to take Africa on its own terms, not mine, and to learn my limits and present myself not as a do-gooder with a big heart, but as someone with something to give and gain by being there. Compassion wasn't enough

Sometimes the most important things that we do are things we cannot measure.

When it comes to solving problems of poverty, impact investing can act as a catalyst, but it is not a silver bullet. Successful businesses serving the poor need more than investment capital. They also need infrastructure to enable effective distribution, strong regulatory systems, access to markets, technical assistance as they scale up, and more

1.5 billion people lack proper access to electricity. Many buy kerosene, which can cost 30 percent of their income. It sends millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. And often the lamp will fall over and catch the house on fire. So mothers hate it, but it's their only option.

What would the world look like if we asked ourselves the following more often; are our actions helping others find a way to feel more freer, more dignified and more beautiful?

I was encouraged to break all the rules but to take the best of philanthropy, the best of investing, and the best of development finance, and experiment with new ways to create this venture capital model of using philanthropy to back patient capital investments, and then build solutions that were measured in terms of the kind of impact and change they were making on people's lives and in the world, not just on the financial return.

Entrepreneurs are the seekers of solutions, and that they will go into these places where both market and traditional aid has failed or traditional charity has failed.

What we really yearn for as human beings is to be visible.

Poverty is too complex to be answered with a one-size-fits-all approach, and if there is any place that illustrates that complexity, as well as a better way forward, it is Rwanda.

People need to believe that they can participate fully in the decisions that affect their lives and have a stake in the societies in which they live

Dignity is more important than wealth.

The older I get, the more determined I feel to do whatever I can to help release that human potential somehow. Not in a fluffy way nor in a hardcore way. But in that middle ground, that marriage of love and power. I'm not afraid of either.

The time for change is now.

As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce.

I feel like I'm a relentless, pragmatic, determined optimist.

Just start Don't wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you.

Poverty is not only about income levels, but for lack of freedom that comes from physical insecurity

Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike into their nineties?

The best change that comes to the world is when all parties are seeing each other as equal, and all parties have the opportunity to be transformed. That really goes back to the idea of dignity.

I think we so often equate leadership with being experts - the leader is supposed to come in and fix things. But in this interconnected world we live in now, it's almost impossible for just one person to do that.

The only way we really create change is to enter any situation with the humility to listen and to recognize the world as it is, and then the audacity to dream what it could be, to have the patience to start and let the work teach you, to be willing to lead when you need to lead, and to listen. To have a sense of generosity and empathy, but not over-empathy, because accountability is so critical to building solutions that work.

For too much of history, we've viewed the world's precious resources - both environmental and human - as things to extract, to make the most of in order to maximize their potential.

We don't see profit as a blind instrument.

Acumen Fund's patient capital investment in Western Seed is intended to enhance the food security and economic independence of Kenya's smallholder farmers.

May each of you live lives of immersion. They won't necessarily be easy lives. But in the end, it is all that will sustain us.

If you're looking at distributing alternative energy in Nigeria, for instance, what gets in your way is not people's ability to pay, not people's desire for a clean solar lamps or biomass opportunities. But there is a strong status quo that really depends on selling diesel.