Microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge, posing an untapped opportunity to create markets, bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves.

The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system.

How very popular to say, 'spend more on this, expend more on that.' And of course, we all have our favorite causes; I know I do. But someone has to add up the figures. Every business has to do it, every housewife has to do it, [and] every government should do it.

Globalisation, for me, seems to be not first-order harm, and I find it very hard not to think about the billion people who have been dragged out of poverty as a result.

The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.

One of the market's virtues, and the reason it enables so much peaceful interaction and cooperation among such a great variety of peoples, is that it demands of its participants only that they observe a relatively few basic principles, among them honesty, the sanctity of contracts, and respect for private property.