Amartya Sen Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• To say that certainly America was very lucky to get a large amount of land, and the native Indians were extremely unlucky to have white men coming over here, is one thing. But to say that the whole of the American prosperity was based on exploiting the indigenous population would be a great mistake.

  Amartya Sen

  Mistake, Men, White Man

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

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• An Arab activist can take pride in the Arab heritage of mathematics and science or he can take pride in his religion, and there's pride to be taken in both. But one of them could be exploited much more easily and has been in the context of world conflict. And the other is very difficult to do on the grounds that science and literature and mathematics have been among the uniting factors in the history of the world.

  Amartya Sen

  Taken, Pride, Heritage

  Source: www.pbs.org

  7 Copy quote

• Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.

  Amartya Sen

  Feet, Shooting, Oneself

  Amartya Sen (2006). “The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity”, p.90, Penguin UK

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• 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

  Education, Ignorance, Opportunity

  Jean Drèze, Amartya Sen, World Institute for Development Economics Research (1997). “Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives”, p.5, Oxford University Press

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• I have not had any serious non-academic job.

  Amartya Sen

  Jobs, Serious, Academic

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• One of the things that any kind of studies bring out is that the mere act of schooling - getting together, the organization involved, going to classes on time, and there're things being taught, sitting down with others with different backgrounds, chatting with them, and, sometimes when there are big barriers, eating together when there are school meals, which are big things together with a big social impact - they themselves have a major effect.

  Amartya Sen

  School, Eating Together, Class

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• We live in a world where there is a need for pluralistic institutions and for recognizing different types of freedom, economic, social, cultural, and political, which are interrelated.

  Amartya Sen

  Political, Different, Needs

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

  6 Copy quote

• We live in a world community, and economic contact has partly contributed to that. It’s also the case that economic opportunity opened up by economic contact has helped to a great extent to reduce poverty in many parts of the world.

  Amartya Sen

  Opportunity, Community, World

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• One has to be realistic. One’s concern for equity and justice in the world must not carry one into the alien territory of unreasoned belief. That’s very important.

  Amartya Sen

  Justice, Important, World

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• I think the UN's role - especially since it's not an extremely rich fund, and that's to put it mildly - is mainly to act as a leading thinker of the world in terms of how to think about the future.

  Amartya Sen

  Thinking, Roles, World

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Amartya Sen (2009). “The Idea of Justice”, p.130, Harvard University Press

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• Virtually everything we do is dependent on others, from the arts and culture to farmers who grow the food we eat. Quite a lot of the differences that make us rich and poor are matters just of luck. To somehow revel in one’s privilege would be a mistake. An even bigger mistake would be trying to convert that into a theory that the rich are so much more productive than many of us.

  Amartya Sen

  Art, Mistake, Differences

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

  10 Copy quote

• If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can’t win many elections after a famine, and you don’t like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.

  Amartya Sen

  Party, Winning, Government

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

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• 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

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• I remain instinctively hostile to communitarian philosophy and communitarian politics.

  Amartya Sen

  Philosophy, Hostile

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

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• I'’m generally in favor of economic globalization. Having said that, it doesn’t always work and does not immediately work in the interest of all. There are sufferers.

  Amartya Sen

  Economic Globalization, Doe, Favors

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• I don’t think that India is much celebrated for its democracy. Democracy has been a very neglected commodity at home and abroad.

  Amartya Sen

  Home, Thinking, Democracies Have

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• 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

  Amartya Kumar Sen (1997). “Choice, Welfare and Measurement”, p.92, Harvard University Press

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• [N]o democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine.

  Amartya Sen

  Democracy, Famine, Free Press

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• 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

  "Freedom's market" by Amartya Sen, www.theguardian.com. June 25, 2000.

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• 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

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• [To organize a school] looks much more difficult in theory than it does in practice.

  Amartya Sen

  School, Practice, Doe

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Capability is just a concept of what is it we're looking at. Now how far we can go along that and what new capabilities become possible is something we have to judge.

  Amartya Sen

  Judging, Capability, Concepts

  Source: liambyrne.co.uk

  4 Copy quote

• If you're dealing with grappling [with] problems of feeding people, the biggest impact in fertility reduction is girls' schools. Schooled girls make a bigger impact on that than any other factor - not these various regulations [such as] you have to have one child or that. It turns out that none of these are effective.

  Amartya Sen

  Girl, Children, School

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The fact that schools can actually be a major factor in cementing the world is a factor that's worth considering, the fact that we all have a shared human identity in addition to many other identities.

  Amartya Sen

  School, Identity, World

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

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