We create institutions and policies on the basis of the way we make assumptions about us and others. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us. So we have had poor people around us. If we had believed that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have created appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world . . . .

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 . . . .

One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like . . . .

- Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner