Amartya Sen famous quotes

Empowering women is key to building a future we want
-- Amartya Sen

#Keys #Empowering #Want

Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being
-- Amartya Sen

#Full Potential #Poverty #Realizing

Economic growth without investment in human development is unsustainable - and unethical
-- Amartya Sen

#Growth #Development #Investment

While I am interested both in economics and in philosophy, the union of my interests in the two fields far exceeds their intersection.
-- Amartya Sen

#Philosophy #Two #Unions

we must go on fighting for basic education for all, but also emphasize the importance of the content of education. We have to make sure that sectarian schooling does not convert education into a prison, rather than being a passport to the wide world.
-- Amartya Sen

#Educational #Fighting #Goes On

A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.
-- Amartya Sen

#Alive #Argument #Defeated

If the knowledge of torture of others makes you sick, it is a case of sympathy... It can be argued that behaviour based on sympathy is in an important sense egoistic, for one is oneself pleased at others' pleasure and pained at others' pain, and the pursuit of one's own utility may thus be helped by sympathetic action.
-- Amartya Sen

#Pain #Sick #Religion

A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.
-- Amartya Sen

#Disgusting #Optimal #Stills

There are Muslims of all kinds. The idea of closing them into a single identity is wrong.
-- Amartya Sen

#Ideas #Identity #Kind

the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute
-- Amartya Sen

#Discovery #Choices #Identity

The success of a society is to be evaluated primarily by the freedoms that members of the society enjoy.
-- Amartya Sen

#Members #Enjoy

Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.
-- Amartya Sen

#Feet #Shooting #Oneself

Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence … they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press. … a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have
-- Amartya Sen

#Country #Party #Independent

[Globalization] has enriched the world scientifically and culturally and benefited many people economically as well.
-- Amartya Sen

#People #World #Globalization

The increasing tendency towards seeing people in terms of one dominant ‘identity’ (‘this is your duty as an American’, ‘you must commit these acts as a Muslim’, or ‘as a Chinese you should give priority to this national engagement’) is not only an imposition of an external and arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups (to all of which he or she belongs).
-- Amartya Sen

#Loyalty #People #Giving

Economics, as it has emerged, can be made more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behaviour and judgment.
-- Amartya Sen

#Challenges #Inspire #Attention

No substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press.
-- Amartya Sen

#Country #Independent #Democratic

Human development, as an approach, is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it.
-- Amartya Sen

#Ideas #Development #Economy

Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.
-- Amartya Sen

#Opportunity #Challenges #Inspire

Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means.
-- Amartya Sen

#Mean #Development #Ends

Human ordeals thrive on ignorance. To understand a problem with clarity is already half way towards solving it.
-- Amartya Sen

#Ignorance #Half #Way

Development requires major source of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overactivity of repressive states.
-- Amartya Sen

#Opportunity #Poverty #Development

There is considerable evidence that women's education and literacy tend to reduce the mortality rates of children
-- Amartya Sen

#Children #Literacy #Mortality

Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all it's many forms. Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.
-- Amartya Sen

#Reality #Joy #Suffering

It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality
-- Amartya Sen

#Taken #Humanity #Important

I was told Indian women don't think like that about equality. But I would like to argue that if they don't think like that they should be given a real opportunity to think like that.
-- Amartya Sen

#Real #Opportunity #Equality

I attempted to see famines as broad "economic" problems (concentrating on how people can buy food, or otherwise get entitled to it), rather than in terms of the grossly undifferentiated picture of aggregate food supply for the economy as a whole.
-- Amartya Sen

#People #Poverty #Problem

The best hope for peace in the world lies in the simple but far-reaching recognition that we all have many different associations and affiliations, and we need not see ourselves as being rigidly divided by a single categorization of hardened groups, which confront each other.
-- Amartya Sen

#Lying #Simple #Diversity

Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger; or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses or the opportunity to be adequatley clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities.
-- Amartya Sen

#Opportunity #People #Water

The elimination of ignorance, of illiteracy... and of needless inequalities in opportunities (is) to be seen as objectives that are valued for their own sake. They expand our freedom to lead the lives we have reason to value, and these elementary capabilities are of importance on their own
-- Amartya Sen

#Educational #Ignorance #Opportunity

Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver, but also broadens the giver - the teachers, the parents, the friends.
-- Amartya Sen

#Teacher #Parent #Enlightening

People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.
-- Amartya Sen

#Race #People #Giving

But once we recognize that many ideas that are taken to be quintessentially Western have also flourished in other civilizations, we also see that these ideas are not as culture-specific as is sometimes claimed. We need not begin with pessimism, at least on this ground, about the prospects of reasoned humanism in the world.
-- Amartya Sen

#Taken #Civilization #Ideas

Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty
-- Amartya Sen

#Freedom #Poverty #Sometimes

Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization.
-- Amartya Sen

#Knowledge #Fighting #Class

To conclude this discussion, assessment of justice demands engagement with the 'eyes of mankind',first, because we may variously identify with the others elsewhere and not just with our local community;second, because our choices and actions may affect the lives of others far as well as near;and third,because what they see from their respective perspective of history and geography may help us to overcome our own parochialism.
-- Amartya Sen

#Eye #Assessment #Justice

When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.
-- Amartya Sen

#Opportunity #Awards #Care

If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.
-- Amartya Sen

#Justice #Choices #Strategy

Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.
-- Amartya Sen

#People #Enough #Characteristics

Development cannot really be so centered only on those in power.
-- Amartya Sen

#Development #Libertarian

The notion of human right builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being. They differ, therefore, from constitutionally created rights guaranteed for specific people.
-- Amartya Sen

#Country #Rights #People

Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror.
-- Amartya Sen

#People #Identity #Violence

I have not had any serious non-academic job.
-- Amartya Sen

#Jobs #Serious #Academic

From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.
-- Amartya Sen

#Prevention #Causation #Famine

But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.
-- Amartya Sen

#Teacher #Years #Ideas

I left Delhi, in 1971, shortly after Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published in 1970.
-- Amartya Sen

#Choices #Welfare #Social

Opponents of globalisation may see it as a new folly, but it is neither particularly new, nor, in general, a folly.
-- Amartya Sen

#May #Opponents #Folly

I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another.
-- Amartya Sen

#Campus #Born #University

It is also very engaging - and a delight - to go back to Bangladesh as often as I can, which is not only my old home, but also where some of my closest friends and collaborators live and work.
-- Amartya Sen

#Home #Delight #Bangladesh

The exchange between different cultures can not possibly be seen as a threat, when it is friendly. But I believe that the dissatisfaction with the overall architecture often depends on the quality of leadership.
-- Amartya Sen

#Believe #Friendly #Quality

No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.
-- Amartya Sen

#Taken #Democracy #World

The student community of Presidency College was also politically most active.
-- Amartya Sen

#College #Community #Students