Democracy is a universal value

Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.

I have not had any serious non-academic job.

If jobs are important, education is important.

Empowering women is key to building a future we want

A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.

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

Gender inequality is not one problem, it's a collection of problems.

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

Being able to read, write, do your sums really transforms a human being.

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

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

Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty

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

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

No substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic country - no matter how poor.

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

I remain instinctively hostile to communitarian philosophy and communitarian politics.

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

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

I think that so many of our abilities to do things depend on interaction with each other.

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

I think education has a bigger impact on the lives of people than absolutely anything else.

Anything that increases the voice of young women tends therefore to reduce the fertility rate.

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

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

The lack of economic freedom could be a very major reason for loss of liberty, liberty of life.

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

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

I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another.

You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable.

Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.

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

There are few subjects that match the social significance of women's education in the contemporary world.

Progress is more plausibly judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent

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

Education can really transform the insecurities in the world into a bigger vision of what we are as human beings.

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

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

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

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

Human life depends not only on income but also on social opportunities, [for example] what the state does for educating.

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

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

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

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

Nearly everywhere Buddhism went, there had been a higher level of literacy, even in miserable Burma, not to mention Thailand and Sri Lanka.

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

Even though I’m pro-globalization, I have to say thank God for the anti-globalization movement. They’re putting important issues on the agenda.

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.

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