“The social entrepreneurs are governments’ best friends.”

The most critical variable [to becoming a change-maker] is one’s willingness to give oneself permission.

The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is stuck & to provide new ways to get it unstuck.

The biggest problem is getting beyond the “you can’t” syndrome. The moment you figure that out, you’re on your way to flying.

There are millions of people who can get things done. There are very, very few people who will change the pattern in the whole field.

Everyone says youve got to do a foundation and legal structure to finance social change. What nonsense!

Organizations must shift away from repetitive-function hierarchies with rules and enforcement and walls.

The most powerful force in the world is a big idea- if it is the hands of a great entrepreneur.

Instead, we must migrate rapidly to becoming a global ‘team of teams’ that comes together in whatever combination necessary to add the greatest value to the changes underway.

If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?.

Social entrepreneurs are married to a vision of, for example, a better way of helping young people grow up or of delivering global healthcare. They simply will not stop because they cannot be happy until their vision becomes the new pattern.

To break the mental chains that make us small because everyone tells us we cannot.

What is the most powerful force in the world? And I think you would agree that is a big idea if it is in the hands of an entrepreneur who is actually going to make the idea not only happen, but spread all across society.

We started Ashoka here in India with a simple idea: that you needed social entrepreneurs to deal with problems that don’t fit the business paradigm.

If everyone is a changemaker, there’s no way a problem can outrun a solution

When you think for-profit and non-profit, you most often think of entities with either zero social return or zero return on capital and zero social return.

Imagine a world where everyone is really a change maker.