Jacqueline Novogratz Quotes

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. - BUDDHA

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

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

Wealth today has been created by a world view dominated by fast-moving networks, open information, bottom-up entrepreneurialism.

President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I would say that the converse is true.

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

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

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

As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, we need to find better solutions that will include everyone in today's opportunities. (197)

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

Too often people view idealists as naive.

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

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

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

Standing with the poor means walking away from unethical leaders, even when their companies are 'succeeding.'

Today, 30-year-olds are becoming social entrepreneurs.

Even when early innovations start to succeed, it is not uncommon to see growing businesses sabotaged for threatening the status quo.

Sometimes very small investments can release enormous, infinite potential that exists in all of us.

Changing the world is not easy.

Many business leaders are seeing the relationship between long term success and sustainability, and that's very heartening.

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

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

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

People across the world are yearning to be connected to stories of hope.

I am an insomniac. Most of my nights include a moment of wakening. Often I will make my way to the kitchen to make tea and read for awhile.

You have to learn to ask questions in a way that will elicit more nuanced answers, rather than the answers you would like to get.

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

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

We are connected, but the weave is sometimes fragile. (192)

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

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

Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.

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

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

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

We need moral leadership and courage in our world.

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

Grief releases love and it also instills a profound sense of connection.

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

Through the Fellows Program, Acumen Fund prepares future global leaders with the tools necessary to drive significant social change.

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

If we have learned anything, it is the horror that can happen when people don't think for themselves, but instead follow authority blindly.

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

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

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

Our actions - and inaction - touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe.

Money earned by men would not always reach to their wives and children.

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

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

Being poor doesn't mean being ordinary.

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

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.

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

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

Power corrupts on an equal-opportunity basis.

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

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.

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

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

I'm feeling optimistic about rural Pakistan. Farmers are making good money.

The time for change is now.

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?

We don't see profit as a blind instrument.

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

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

By helping a woman, you help a family.

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

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.

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

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

Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund.

Dignity is more important than wealth.

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

The Pakistanis are very resilient people.

Acumen Fund is my prayer in response to genocide and what happened in Rwanda.

On a macro level, four billion people on Earth make less than four dollars a day.

Nothing important happens in life without a cost.

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

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

Failure can be an incredibly motivating force.

We live in a world in which we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

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

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

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.

What farmers gain most of all from the increase in agricultural productivity, of course, is choice.

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

You should focus on being more interested than interesting.

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

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

I should learn to be a bird on the outside and a tiger within.

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

We are each other's destiny.

I would like philanthropists to take more risks and invest more in risk capital.

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

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

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