Top 100 Jacqueline Novogratz Quotes
#1. What we call people so often distances us from them, and makes them little.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#2. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#3. Hope is a path on the mountainside. At first there is no path. But then there are people passing that way. And there is a path. - LU XUN
Jacqueline Novogratz
#4. 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 ...
Jacqueline Novogratz
#6. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#7. Though either choice was good, one was truer to myself ... Ultimately, I reflected on Geothe's invocation to 'make a commitment and the forces of the universe will conspire to make it happen' and chose the uncharted path.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#9. Our lives are so short. And our time on this planet is so precious. All we have is each other.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#10. We often don't realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#13. I dream a world in no one feels the need for or fear of predatory behavior, in which each of us walks with the knowledge of how beautiful - and valuable - is each human life.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#14. Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#17. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#18. My dream is to find individuals who take financial resources and convert them into changing the world in the most positive ways.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#19. I have seen that traditional approaches to charity and aid don't solve problems of poverty. In fact, too often they create dependence.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#21. It's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#22. Freedom ultimately is dignity. And dignity, not income, is the opposite of poverty.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#23. If we have learned anything, it is the horror that can happen when people don't think for themselves, but instead follow authority blindly.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#24. 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
Jacqueline Novogratz
#25. As a 25-year-old banker, I decided to leave my career and change the world. This sounds like a move that a 25-year-old banker might make today - to escape the chaos.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#26. Sproxil will help combat the multi-billion dollar counterfeit drug market, empower customers, and give them the resources to make informed pharmaceutical purchasing decisions.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#27. Even when early innovations start to succeed, it is not uncommon to see growing businesses sabotaged for threatening the status quo.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#28. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#30. Many business leaders are seeing the relationship between long term success and sustainability, and that's very heartening.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#31. In India, we now see many highly qualified professionals ready to work in the rural hinterland and in their own towns and cities to tackle development issues directly without depending much on the government.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#32. When Jeff Sachs says every poor person should receive a free bed net, I agree - but in reality, many end up not receiving one. And I don't live in a world of shoulds.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#33. Just start Don't wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#34. Today, poor people the world over are seeking opportunity and choice to have greater dignity in their lives - and they want to do it themselves, even if they need a little help. Today we have the tools and technologies to bring real opportunities to people all across the world.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#35. Companies like Husk Power Systems are working to impact positively not only the environment, but to ensure that someday everyone, including the poorest of the poor in rural India, will have access to clean and affordable electricity.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#36. I've been working on issues of poverty for more than 20 years, and so it's ironic that the problem that and question that I most grapple with is how you actually define poverty. What does it mean?
Jacqueline Novogratz
#37. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#38. We live in a world in which we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#39. There's a real moral imperative in being an organization that takes the time to sit and listen to the customers and the people they're serving.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#40. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#41. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#42. Honour what is most beautiful about the past and build it into the promise of the future.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#43. President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I would say that the converse is true.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#44. As both developed and developing nations search for alternative sources of energy in response to the growing energy crisis, we at Acumen Fund believe that investing in entrepreneurs who provide innovative energy solutions is an increasingly critical part of the solution.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#46. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#47. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#48. Wealth today has been created by a world view dominated by fast-moving networks, open information, bottom-up entrepreneurialism.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#50. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#51. As is so often the case, the supposedly insignificant understood the psychology of the strong, while the strong didn't have a clue about the other.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#52. 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?
Jacqueline Novogratz
#53. I'm feeling optimistic about rural Pakistan. Farmers are making good money.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#54. Listening is not only about waiting, but it's also learning how better to ask questions.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#55. In the case of maternal health care, you look at, well naturally, it's the mother who's the customer, who makes the decisions. But in truth, the mother in many areas, in certain parts of India, the mother has very little decision-making power at all. The real decision-maker is the mother-in-law.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#56. One of the first things that surprised me in a positive, wonderfully positive way, is that this works - patient capital works.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#57. This idea of universal access to basic healthcare has to be figured out as a world. No country has figured it out in part because it is driven by ideology.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#58. Acumen Fund's patient capital investment in Western Seed is intended to enhance the food security and economic independence of Kenya's smallholder farmers.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#60. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, we need to find better solutions that will include everyone in today's opportunities. (197)
Jacqueline Novogratz
#61. Standing with the poor means walking away from unethical leaders, even when their companies are 'succeeding.'
Jacqueline Novogratz
#62. Leaders can get stuck in groupthink because they're really not listening, or they're listening only to what they want to listen to, or they actually think they're so right that they're not interested in listening. And that leads to a lot of suboptimal solutions in the world.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#64. The poor don't live in functional market economies as the rest of us do, but in political economies where corruption and broken systems extend from local government to moneylenders.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#65. We see very, very high rates of C-sections, Cesarean sections, in India. Lots of reasons for it, high levels of malnutrition have meant that women have very small pelvic areas often, so if they have larger babies, it's very hard to deliver.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#67. Through the Fellows Program, Acumen Fund prepares future global leaders with the tools necessary to drive significant social change.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#68. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#69. People have to understand that unless social enterprise is experimental, it will not succeed in making a difference.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#70. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#71. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#73. I am so happy, too, though I never married. You know, there are many paths in a life. But the best ones are the ones where you are living the truth and search for good and giving to others.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#75. Honorata's story reminds me of the extraordinary power of the human spirit to withstand almost anything. Her story also speaks to the power of service, to living a life of purpose, and to keeping the flame of hope alive. (175)
Jacqueline Novogratz
#76. What farmers gain most of all from the increase in agricultural productivity, of course, is choice.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#77. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#78. There is power in creating a small model, and then you can create an alliance of other small models.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#80. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#81. People really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#83. Traditional charity and aid are never going to solve the problems of poverty.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#88. I've learned that generosity is far easier than justice and that, in the highly distorted markets of the poor, it is all too easy to veer only toward the charitable, to have low
or no
expectations for low-income people. This does nothing but reaffirm prejudices on all sides.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#89. I believe the government should ensure all children are provided with a good education.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#90. We run Aravind like McDonald's," he explained, "clean and organized, with every process known and understood so that we get maximum efficiency. Two-thirds of the patients pay nothing or nearly nothing, and yet the hospital is consistently profitable - and growing.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#91. When I first went to Africa, I thought that I was personally going to save the continent, if not the world.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#92. Our actions - and inaction - touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#93. When people gain income, they gain choice, and that is fundamental to dignity.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#94. 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.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#96. There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. - BUDDHA
Jacqueline Novogratz
#98. Very small investments can release the infinite potential that lies in all of us.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#99. 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?
Jacqueline Novogratz
#100. On a macro level, four billion people on Earth make less than four dollars a day.
Jacqueline Novogratz
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