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.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the stark contrast between wealth and poverty and emphasizes the need to learn from past injustices.
Muhammad Yunus reflects on the deep-rooted issue of poverty and its coexistence with luxury. He suggests that once poverty is eradicated, society will need to remember and understand its historical presence and the reasons it persisted for so long. The quote prompts us to consider the social and moral implications of wealth disparity and urges future generations to ensure such inequalities do not recur.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about social reform to highlight the importance of addressing poverty.
Civilization has given us enormous successes: going to the moon, technology. But then this is the civilisation that took us to debt, environmental crisis, every single crisis. We need a civilization where we say goodbye to these things.
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.
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.
Some people think that poor people are lazy. Actually, it takes a lot of work to survive when you are dirt-poor.
By simply capitalizing on core strengths and knowledge, companies and entrepreneurs can engage in an emerging business model that will enable them to create - and demonstrate - real, sustainable social impact in society.
Today, if you look at financial systems around the globe, more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people, more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame.
Prisoners do matter when analyzing the severity of racial inequality in the U.S. Yet because they are out of sight and out of mind, it is easy to imagine that we are making far more racial progress than we actually are.
If we continue to tolerate this level of poverty in our cities, and go along with eviction as commonplace in poor neighborhoods, it's not for a lack of resources. It will be a lack of something else.
The one public system in which America goes out of its way to provide services to African-Americans is prison.
The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.
The March on Washington was a March for Jobs and Freedom. There are still too many people who are unemployed or underemployed in America - they're black, white, Latino, Native American and Asian American.
The basis for sustainable progress is legal protections grounded in an awareness of how identity has been used to deny opportunity.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.