Bill Drayton

“What does an entrepreneur do? The first thing is they've given themselves permission to see a problem. Most people don't want to see problems... Once you see a problem and you keep looking at it, you'll find an answer.”

“It's the combination: big idea with a good entrepreneur: there's nothing more powerful.”

“The social entrepreneurs are governments' best friends.”

“We would like to have every middle and high school become a place where there will be lots of examples of youth competence and confidence.”

“Imagine a world where everyone is really a change maker.”

“An entrepreneur is someone who brings a pattern change.”

“We have to teach empathy as we do literacy.”

“White House cultures inevitably reflect the president's character. Jimmy Carter is a thoroughly honest, good person. So was his White House.”

“I was taught by my parents that people who are loud don't have anything to say. I've found if you're suggesting quite big changes, a quiet style may be reassuring.”

“Good entrepreneurs can manage, but no one but an entrepreneur can entrepreneur, let alone help build and lead the world's community of leading social entrepreneurs and their top business entrepreneur allies.”

“You can't be a change-maker by reading a book.”

“Change begets change as much as repetition reinforces repetition.”

“The life purpose of the true social entrepreneur is to change the world.”

“In 1962, when I was 19, I visited India. With introductions from people involved in the U.S. civil rights movement, I was able to visit with several of the leading Gandhians there. The hundred-to-one difference in average per capita income between America and India at the time was a stark reality for the people who became my friends there.”

“Entrepreneurs almost always have to step out of existing institutions that embody old ways of doing things to build their vision.”

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

“We are all very deeply the children of our parents and their parents. Far more than we generally realize.”

“Every successful organization has to make the transition from a world defined primarily by repetition to one primarily defined by change. This is the biggest transformation in the structure of how humans work together since the Agricultural Revolution.”

“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.”

“Entrepreneurs cannot be happy people until they have seen their visions become the new reality across all of society.”