Top 90 Jacqueline Novogratz Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The time for change is now.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

Featured in: Transformation Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Thought Provoking Quotes, Vision Quotes, Progress Quotes

2. “Just start. Don’t wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Work, New Beginnings Quotes, Work Ethic Quotes, Professional Growth Quotes, Moving Forward Quotes

3. “Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

4. “We need moral leadership and courage in our world.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

7. “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.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

8. “Honour what is most beautiful about the past and build it into the promise of the future.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

9. “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.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

10. “To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

12. “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.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

13. “What is the cost of not daring? What is the cost of not trying?”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

15. “Nothing important happens in life without a cost.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

16. “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.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

17. “We don’t see profit as a blind instrument.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

Featured in: Thought Provoking Quotes

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

20. “Freedom is what beauty feels like when it can most express itself.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

21. “The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

23. “What would the world look like if we asked ourselves the following more often; are our actions helping others find a way to feel more freer, more dignified and more beautiful?”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

24. “Listening is not only about waiting, but it’s also learning how better to ask questions.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

25. “People need to believe that they can participate fully in the decisions that affect their lives and have a stake in the societies in which they live.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

26. “I think I still have a great sense of adventure and trust, and am surprisingly idealistic given all the horrible things I’ve seen since I was 25. I think how I have changed is that I have a much deeper understanding of the dark forces in the world, of power.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

27. “For too much of history, we’ve viewed the world’s precious resources – both environmental and human – as things to extract, to make the most of in order to maximize their potential.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

28. “When individual listening is ingrained in collective culture, the whole community is more likely to shine.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

29. “I’ve heard it said that the most dangerous animal on the planet is the adolescent male.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

30. “Freedom ultimately is dignity. And dignity, not income, is the opposite of poverty.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

31. “Things are always harder than you think they’re going to be.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

32. “You should focus on being more interested than interesting.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

33. “Being poor doesn’t mean being ordinary.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

34. “We need leaders, we ourselves need to lead from a place that has the audacity to believe that we ourselves can extend the fundamental assumption that all men are created equal to every, man woman and child on this planet. And we need the humility to recognize that we cannot do it alone.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

35. “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.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

36. “When systems are broken, it’s an opportunity for invention and innovation.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

38. “I wrote ‘The Blue Sweater’ to inspire more people to become engaged in working to solve the problems of global poverty.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

39. “The time for us to begin innovating and looking for new solutions is now.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

40. “People really don’t want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

41. “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?”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

42. “Failure can be an incredibly motivating force.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

44. “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...”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

45. “Africa can stun you in an instant. It can throw floods and drought and disease at you, sometimes all at the same time. In the next moment, it will tease you with its magnificent beauty, so even if you don’t forget, you can find a way to forgive. Ultimately, it keeps you coming back for more.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

47. “How you see where you are always depends on where you’ve been.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

48. “Traditional charity and aid are never going to solve the problems of poverty.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz

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

— Jacqueline Novogratz