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

Amartya Sen

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Amartya Sen
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: November 3
Economist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Shantiniketan
Amartya Kumar Sen
Professor Amartya Kumar Sen
Mean
Principal
Primaries
Primary
Among
Development
Means
Ends
Also
Freedoms

More quotes by Amartya Sen

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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
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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
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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
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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
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There's no reason why one need not look at the content of education just as one is expanding the availability of school, because it doesn't cost more money to get them [a] better education. It requires better textbooks, it requires a vision, it requires a determination, but it's not very expensive to do that anyway.
Amartya Sen
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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
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The anti-globalization movement is one of the biggest globalized events of the contemporary world, people coming from everywhere, —Australia, Indonesia, Britain, India, Poland, Germany, South Africa—to demonstrate in Seattle or Quebec. What could be more global than that?
Amartya Sen
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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
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You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable.
Amartya Sen
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[To organize a school] looks much more difficult in theory than it does in practice.
Amartya Sen
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In all kinds of ways there are different freedoms that effect our lives and you can assess what our lives are like by looking at the various freedoms that we have.
Amartya Sen
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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
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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
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Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver, but also broadens the giver - the teachers, the parents, the friends.
Amartya Sen
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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
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The success of a society is to be evaluated primarily by the freedoms that members of the society enjoy.
Amartya Sen
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No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.
Amartya Sen
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Famines occur under a colonial administration, like the British Raj in India or for that matter in Ireland, or under military dictators in one country after another, like Somalia and Ethiopia, or in one-party states like the Soviet Union and China.
Amartya Sen
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I think gender inequality is a problem that goes back a long, long time. In human society, as a whole, women have tended to have a kind of inferior position - very often combined with playing up women as great role [models].
Amartya Sen
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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