Jacqueline Novogratz Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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?

The time for change is now.

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.

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.

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.

Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

You should focus on being more interested than interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Being poor doesn't mean being ordinary.

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

Nothing important happens in life without a cost.

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

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

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