David Rockefeller Quotes

People have to understand that unless social enterprise is experimental, it will not succeed in making a difference.

I'm an agent of change all day long, and I want to meet other people like that.

The social entrepreneurs are governments' best friends.

When your focus is social change and not financial change, why wouldn't you want to share that openly? Innovation only succeeds when it's shared.

A social entrepreneur finds market-based solutions for change. Because without a market-based solution, without a sustainable solution, you go nowhere.

While governments are not off the hook, the charity world needs to innovate and find new ways to attract outside investment to boost our social productivity.

Today, 30-year-olds are becoming social entrepreneurs.

Through the Fellows Program, Acumen Fund prepares future global leaders with the tools necessary to drive significant social change.

True philanthropy requires a disruptive mindset, innovative thinking and a philosophy driven by entrepreneurial insights and creative opportunities.

No one doubts the enormity of the social challenges we face around the world but one critical element of our response must be the generation of new thinking and ideas. Yet creating the conditions that make this possible is not simple.

In the rest of the world, rich people will give a donation, and businessmen give to charities. But in Mexico, the execution capacity of what we call the social sector is missing. I find it much more effective to set up the actual social organisation and then fund it with my money.

I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks.

To overcome poverty and the flaws of the economic crisis in our society, we need to envision our social life. We have to free our mind, imagine what has never happened before and write social fiction. We need to imagine things to make them happen. If you don't imagine, it will never happen.

This was the invention of modern American philanthropy as we know it. The idea of systematizing giving to achieve human progress was the true innovation of John D. Rockefeller, and ultimately the Rockefeller Foundation's legacy.

If you ask why I do what I do - I want to make a difference. I don't just want to maintain the status quo. I want to help people, to work with institutions or create ones when they don't exist.

The world needs more social innovations.

The public sector can serve as a catalyst for changing attitudes in the private sector.

Innovators reimagine our world in so many areas. We need them to help reimagine what government can and should be.

I want society to feel they are part of a process of change.

It is not business, it is not government - it is the social sector that may yet save the society.

Social entrepreneurs come from different backgrounds and are by and large, starved of capital. Such socialpreneurs must have extraordinary passion to follow their dreams.

We need more imagination, more innovation and more public financing for projects and programmes that harness the positive energy of young men.

I hope to be remembered as someone who promoted positive change in Mexican business and society - even if this is not currently understood.

Charitable involvement, social impact, and global responsibility have always been important at Bain Capital.

That's what it's about, how society changes people but people can also change society. It only takes a few people to do things and help themselves instead of sitting around on their asses. She has a very global outlook on life and all sorts of things.