Quotes by Social Entrepreneurs

All I want to be is a wandering entrepreneur touching billions of lives. I am going to be the monk who never bought a Ferrari.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
I learned that things are never as complicated as we imagine them to be. It is only our arrogance which seeks to find complicated answers to simple problems.
Muhammad Yunus
This is an emotional request to the for-profit startups I help to build, strategize, and monetize. I do it for free because I care for you and your vision. I don't take an equity or a salary despite knowing that you and your investors will make money, and loads of it, eventually. I help because I care. Please remember, to pay back. Not to me, but to the world. Preferably, donate to a non-profit which will never receive the investments that you can and you are; donate to children and youth who want to do good things, to families that need you, to social startups that sweat day in and day out to bring smiles, and to anyone who cares for PEOPLE more than PROFITS. My salary will be drawn. I will be paid back in full. Thank you!
Sharad Vivek Sagar
..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
I fail to find even one "Netaji" among the several thousand "Netas" of today. India needs our sacrifices once more and my entire life is and will remain dedicated to the service of my country.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
A lot of people with a lot of ill gotten wealth may think that they have high net worth, but will simply never be worthy of any trust or respect.
Jeroninio Almeida
If you aren't preparing for life like a war, you'll end up living like a prisoner of war.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
I believe that everyone is a hero, a leader, a volunteer, a teacher and a champion of change. All we need to do is acknowledge and understand this and then help others to also understand the same. That’s all it takes to be a hero, a leader, a volunteer, a teacher and a champion of change.
Jeroninio Almeida
I personally feel that I could not go out and plant the million trees, but I could go out and tell people to tell 10 people each, ‘Okay, all of us are going to go out and plant 10 trees,’ and you, eventually, plant a million trees.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
People think entrepreneurs are all about fame and money. I was never in for either. And, will never be. This is a much bigger fight.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
Purists don't take shortcuts. For me, the vision is more important than anything.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
The day I realized I could speak well, I decided I won't speak for myself anymore.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
This is what entrepreneurship is all about. You start off operating from a garage. And, end up, operating from a car.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
The kinds of people we meet in our life have a huge impact on the kind of person we become.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
For too long, information, opportunities, and resources have been constraints, they need to be the bridges.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
We got up at 6am to go to school for a few years and we found it so challenging. Some people in our country have woken up at 6am every single morning for decades now so that this nation can wake up and see great mornings. I salute all those wonderful super humans who are inspiring a better tomorrow. Thank you, Teachers!
Sharad Vivek Sagar
What hurts me is the fact that in India, a good doctor is one whom you have to take an appointment with even before you fall sick. Else, you will die but not get treated. A good school is one that won't admit you even if you are in Lower Kindergarten. A good minister is one won't meet you till are some VIP. I want to change this in my lifetime by democratizing education and opportunities.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
When you are trying to do something very innovative and revolutionary, you must also open yourself to a lot of questions.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
Some of the world's biggest challenges can be solved by some of the world's most marginalized communities themselves.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
The moment you inject information, education, and an entrepreneurial spark in a community, it gets empowered enough to inspire, build, and uplift itself.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
a person who does not have respect for time, and does not have a sense of timing, can achieve little.
Verghese Kurien
Internal democracy in schools is as important in order to ensure the true democratization of education.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
The "democratization of education" is everyone's fight, everyone's right.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
An "eye" on the vision is more important than an "I" on the vision.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
You may be smart, talented, and hardworking but if you do not know about an opportunity, you do not get that opportunity. At our offices, we are solving this problem for millions.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
If your sole focus is money, you may create a successful startup. But if it's impact, you can probably create history.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
With every breath, I breathe in so much of inspiration. I feel if there is one thing as free and as important as oxygen, it's inspiration.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
There's a reason why I've spent one-third of my life doing this. My dream is to meet and connect 3 billion young people of the world to information and opportunities in my lifetime.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
It's sad that several political parties still count the dead, the starving, the unemployed by their religion, caste, creed and sect. The young generation needs to engage in politics of right vs wrong and not right vs left.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemas, scripts, mental maps, ideas, metaphors, or narratives. Stories are how we inspire and motivate human beings. Great stories help us to understand our place in the world, create our identity, discover our purpose, form our character and define and teach human values.
Jeroninio Almeida
Some people believe in telling stories. Some believe in doing things about which stories will be told in times to come.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
Our mind cannot be without fear and our head cannot be held high when we become slaves to materialistic values , always wondering why my car is not bigger and better than my neighbours car and in that process forget our human values like dignity, humility , integrity and humanity.
Jeroninio Almeida
Real Humility is when I can treat a minister, a prince, a priest, a teacher, a waiter and a janitor with the same and equal respect.
Jeroninio Almeida
I realised, in all humility, that chosing to lead one kind of life means putting aside the desire to pursue other option.
Verghese Kurien
In India, all along, development as a process was always affected from the top down style of functioning. Naturally, because along with our freedom we had inherited a bureaucracy, which was designed by the British to rule, not to serve. The British way of doing things had always been to get things done through a government department and after independence we Indians merely continued this system.
Verghese Kurien
Any sensible government must learn to unleash the energy of its people and get them to perform instead of trying to get a bureaucracy to perform.
Verghese Kurien
We need to take things personally. We need to stop putting profits above people. We need to stop putting greed above need. We need to stop putting the rule of gold above the golden rule. We need to treat people as people and not as problems.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
Modern Education may make one intelligent but not wise. Wisdom comes from character, social consciousness, self awareness, human values, conscience that helps us know what is right and wrong and independent will that helps us to choose right over wrong.
Jeroninio Almeida
Just because you can't believe it, doesn't mean it's not happening
Sharad Vivek Sagar
We won't let poverty kill educational access & opportunities. We'll kill poverty through education.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
I thought, if we could just come together as a community, even if that just meant playing soccer together, that could be the beginning of something good. Coming together as a community, as a people, creates more power than exists when individuals are fighting each other for scraps. Soccer has always brought people together. Soccer was where I would begin.
Kennedy Odede
There are two way of escaping your poverty,' he offers quietly. 'One, you can use drugs, get drunk - escape. Or you can escape into the world of books; that can be your refuge.
Kennedy Odede
Like navigation markings in unknown waters, definitions of poverty need to be distinctive and unambiguous. A definition that is not precise is as bad as no definition at all.
Muhammad Yunus
Th direct elimination of elimination of poverty should be the objective of all development aid. Development should be viewed as a human rights issue, not as a question of simply increasing the gross national product (GNP).
Muhammad Yunus
I believe that the emphasis on curbing population growth diverts attention from the more vital issue of pursuing policies that allow the population to take care of itself.
Muhammad Yunus
Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That's where it will be.
Muhammad Yunus
When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole.
Muhammad Yunus
What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.
Muhammad Yunus
People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base.
Muhammad Yunus
If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty.
Muhammad Yunus
When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.
Muhammad Yunus
The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability.
Muhammad Yunus
Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor.
Muhammad Yunus
Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.
Muhammad Yunus
I’m encouraging young people to become social business entrepreneurs and contribute to the world, rather than just making money. Making money is no fun. Contributing to and changing the world is a lot more fun.
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
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 licence, your social security number. If a driver's licence is more reliable than the face I wear, then why do I have a face?
Muhammad Yunus
I wonder how can I ever work for an organization that pollutes the world and refuses to clean up and sometimes even own up. And, I wonder how on earth can I work for an organization where one of my fellow classmates wouldn’t get the same paycheck and the same perks and the same benefits as I would simply because she is a girl.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
I am not concerned about results. The only thing I am concerned about is the process. How you tried to achieve something matters more than what you achieved.
Sharad Vivek Sagar
Three Ps that I can't sacrifice: Process, Purpose, and Principles.
Sharad Vivek Sagar