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

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

More quotes by Amartya Sen

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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
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Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses or the opportunity to be adequatley clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities.
Amartya Sen
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In absolutely every way, our lives are transformed by education and basic education in particular. So I would have thought that in any kind of system, to say that the priorities don't include education is a mistake, whether it's [at the] domestic level or at the global level.
Amartya Sen
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Democracy is a universal value
Amartya Sen
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Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.
Amartya Sen
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It seems to me to be kind of inescapable that one has to be interested in the issue of gender and gender equality. I don’t really expect any credit for going in that direction. It’s the only natural direction to go in. Why is it that some people don’t see that as so patently obvious as it should be?
Amartya Sen
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I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another.
Amartya Sen
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We might have reason to be driven! We live for a short stretch of time in a world we share with others. Virtually everything we do is dependent on others, from the arts and culture to farmers who grow the food we eat.
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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Empowering women is key to building a future we want
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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From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.
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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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
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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
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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
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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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Japan became an imperialist country in many ways, but that was much later, after it had already made big progress. I don’t think Japan’s wealth was based on exploiting China. Japan’s wealth was based on its expansion in international trade.
Amartya Sen
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Being able to read, write, do your sums really transforms a human being.
Amartya Sen
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Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.
Amartya Sen