Bill Drayton

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. ”

Public service and respect for ideas is a recurrent theme in both the American and Australian sides of my family. ”

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

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

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

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

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

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. ”

The social entrepreneurs are governments' best friends. ”

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. ”