The Blue Sweater Quotes

“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, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“You should focus on being more interested than interesting.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I took mine and fell flat on my face. 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...

I concluded that if I could only nudge the world a little bit, maybe that would be enough.

But nudging isn't enough.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“How you see where you are always depends on where you've been.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Poverty is not only about income levels, but for lack of freedom that comes from physical insecurity”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“In today's world, the elites are growing even more comfortable with one another across national lines, yet at the same time, less comfortable with low-income people who share their nationality. How we create those bonds of community that are truly global as well as national is one of our generation's great challenges.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“If we have learned anything, it is the horror that can happen when people don't think for themselves, but instead follow authority blindly.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” – George Bernard Shaw”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater

“As is so often the case, the supposedly insignificant understood the psychology of the strong, while the strong didn't have a clue about the other.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all--and the foundation for our collective survival.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Though either choice was good, one was truer to myself... Ultimately, I reflected on Geothe's invocation to 'make a commitment and the forces of the universe will conspire to make it happen' and chose the uncharted path.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Language has very little to do with the words you say and everything with how you say them. Everyone understands what you are doing, even if the words sometimes don’t follow.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Each of us needs to develop the courage to listen with our whole heart and mind, to give love without asking for thanks in return, and to meet each person as a chance to know a new individual, not as a way of reaffirming prejudices. (284)”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Don't wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you. No one expects you to get it right in the beginning, and you'll learn more from your mistakes than you will from your early successes anyway. So stop worrying so much and just look at your best bets and go. (221)”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“I've learned that generosity is far easier than justice and that, in the highly distorted markets of the poor, it is all too easy to veer only toward the charitable, to have low--or no--expectations for low-income people. This does nothing but reaffirm prejudices on all sides.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Poverty is too complex to be answered with a one-size-fits-all approach, and if there is any place that illustrates that complexity, as well as a better way forward, it is Rwanda.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“We can end poverty if we start by looking at all human beings as part of a single global community that recognizes that everyone deserves a chance to build a life worth living.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Hope is a path on the mountainside. At first there is no path. But then there are people passing that way. And there is a path.”   —LU XUN”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.” – Marian Wright Edelman”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” – Arundhati Roy”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater

“I think that was the moment when humility in its truest form—rather than an easy but false humbleness—began to creep in. Until then, I’d been too vested in knowing the answers and in being right. For the first time in my life, being right had nothing to do with being successful or effective. I also began to be more honest about what was happening around me—I couldn’t stand all talk without action, and too many expatriates and elite Africans seemed to revel in it. I wanted to work directly with poor women themselves.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“The key is to find local leaders who own the dream and will make it happen.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“After more than 20 years of working in Africa, India, and Pakistan, I’ve learned that solutions to poverty must be driven by discipline, accountability, and market strength, not easy sentimentality. I’ve learned that many of the answers to poverty lie in the space between the market and charity and that what is needed most of all is moral leadership willing to build solutions from the perspectives of poor people themselves rather than imposing grand theories and plans upon them.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Honorata asked me to accompany her to visit the group of widows she supported. “They need to give you their stories for their own healing,” she said. This notion of “giving” stories was new, but I would soon learn the power of bearing witness and of transferring pain through storytelling. By listening and acknowledging the truths of those women, I had the honor of playing a miniscule part in their healing.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Only by knowing ourselves can we truly understand others—and knowing from where you come is an important part of knowing who you are.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Power without love,” Martin Luther King Jr. said in one of his last speeches, “is reckless and abusive,” and, he continued, “love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“For the umpteenth time, I reminded myself that traveling as a single woman is not the same as traveling as a man.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“The challenge wasn’t whether to buy a couple of bottles of champagne; it was instead not to take our privilege for granted and to use it in a way that served the world and our highest purpose.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“There would always be naysayers, we told ourselves; in fact, it was this spirit that ultimately inspired the organization’s name, Duterimbere, which means to go forward with enthusiasm.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World