Quote

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

Amartya Sen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amartya Sen
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: November 3
Economist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Shantiniketan
Amartya Kumar Sen
Professor Amartya Kumar Sen
Half
Understand
Ordeals
Problem
Solving
Human
Thrive
Humans
Clarity
Way
Towards
Ignorance
Already

More quotes by Amartya Sen

Image
China had managed to reduce their fertility to a large extent because of basic expansion of women's education, not because of the one-child family.
Amartya Sen
Image
I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another.
Amartya Sen
Image
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
Image
The market economy succeeds not because some people's interests are suppressed and other people are kept out of the market, but because people gain individual advantage from it.
Amartya Sen
Image
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
Image
It’s scandalous when one thinks about the people who live in a world in which they need not be hungry, in which they need not die without medical care, in which they need not be illiterate, they need not feel hopeless and miserable so much of the time, and yet they are.
Amartya Sen
Image
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
Image
Human life consists of doing certain things ... to take part in the life of the community to be able to talk about subjects that interest me and there freedom of speech comes into it.
Amartya Sen
Image
Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.
Amartya Sen
Image
A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.
Amartya Sen
Image
Hardly any famine affects more than 5 percent, almost never more than 10 percent, of the population. The largest proportion of a population affected was the Irish famine of the 1840s, which came close to 10 percent over a number of years.
Amartya Sen
Image
There’s a clear and strong connection between fertility reduction and women’s literacy and empowerment, including women’s gainful employment. If you look at the more than 300 districts of India, the strongest influences in explaining fertility variations are women’s literacy and gainful economic employment.
Amartya Sen
Image
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
Image
I think education has a bigger impact on the lives of people than absolutely anything else.
Amartya Sen
Image
It was incredible to me that members of one community could kill members of another not for anything personal that they did but simply based on their identity.
Amartya Sen
Image
From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.
Amartya Sen
Image
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
Image
No substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic country - no matter how poor.
Amartya Sen
Image
Education makes us the human beings we are. It has major impacts on economic development, on social equity, gender equity. In all kinds of ways, our lives are transformed by education and security. Even if it had not one iota of effect [on] security, it would still remain in my judgment the biggest priority in the world.
Amartya Sen
Image
the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute
Amartya Sen