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
Ignorance
Already
Half
Understand
Ordeals
Problem
Solving
Human
Thrive
Humans
Clarity
Way
Towards

More quotes by Amartya Sen

Image
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
Image
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
Image
The themes that the anti-globalization protesters bring to the discussion are of extraordinary importance. However, the theses that they often bring to it, sometimes in the form of slogans, are often oversimple.
Amartya Sen
Image
I think the whole progress over the last two or three millennia has been entirely dependent on ideas and techniques and commodities and people moving from one part of the world to another. It seems difficult to take an anti-globalization view if one takes globalization properly in its full sense.
Amartya Sen
Image
Anything that increases the voice of young women tends therefore to reduce the fertility rate.
Amartya Sen
Image
No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.
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
Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.
Amartya Sen
Image
Your voice is much more articulate and people listen to you if you've been to school. In family decisions, not surprisingly, the biggest impact in reducing fertility is girls' education.
Amartya Sen
Image
The lack of economic freedom could be a very major reason for loss of liberty, liberty of life.
Amartya Sen
Image
Progress is more plausibly judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent
Amartya Sen
Image
Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.
Amartya Sen
Image
You can’t prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why don’t the governments stop them?
Amartya Sen
Image
No substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic country - no matter how poor.
Amartya Sen
Image
If jobs are important, education is important.
Amartya Sen
Image
There are few subjects that match the social significance of women's education in the contemporary 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
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
I left Delhi, in 1971, shortly after Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published in 1970.
Amartya Sen
Image
Women's education has a much greater impact [on], for example, fertility. Men's education, if our studies are correct, ha[s] almost no impact on fertility. Women's do. So, by the way, as a man, it's not to the glory of men specifically that it's women's education that reduces child mortality.
Amartya Sen