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Ultimately, imperialism made even the British working classes suffer. This is a point which the British working classes found quite difficult to swallow, but they did, actually.

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
Suffering
Swallow
Point
Classes
Actually
Ultimately
Difficult
Suffer
Found
British
Even
Quite
Made
Class
Working
Imperialism

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There are some people who say that they’re concerned only with poverty but not inequality. But I don’t think that is a sustainable thought. A lot of poverty is, in fact, inequality because of the connection between income and capability—having adequate resources to take part in the life of the community.
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I left Delhi, in 1971, shortly after Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published in 1970.
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Sometimes one makes a distinction between urgency and importance. And while disasters are urgent, the basically most important thing is education. And that's what gives it ultimately urgency too, because unless you do it now, this important thing gets again and again postponed.
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Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.
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[The] USA has been immensely successful in making the determination to deal with terrorism [as] a factor in the global world and, similarly, if it took a similar interest in education, it could make a difference.
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One has to bring the multidimensional impact that schooling makes in the lives of people. There's nothing like it, and I think the importance of it has to be shaken into people's understanding and determination.
Amartya Sen
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I don’t think that India is much celebrated for its democracy. Democracy has been a very neglected commodity at home and abroad.
Amartya Sen
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Poverty is a big barrier if you are at the bottom layer of society, don't know where the next meal is coming from. It is not a big barrier of taking the rich with the poor in a big society to provide schooling for all.
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When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.
Amartya Sen
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I remain instinctively hostile to communitarian philosophy and communitarian politics.
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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We live in a world community, and economic contact has partly contributed to that. It’s also the case that economic opportunity opened up by economic contact has helped to a great extent to reduce poverty in many parts of the world.
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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If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.
Amartya Sen
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There's absolutely no reason why at the level of basic schooling that there should be any inequity whatsoever. And [that's] the first direction to go, [but] that need not prevent you from doing all the other equalities that you want.
Amartya Sen
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Gender inequality is not one problem, it's a collection of problems.
Amartya Sen
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I have not had any serious non-academic job.
Amartya Sen
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I'm very skeptical of the amount of money that goes into military expenditure, not just in the poor countries [but] also in the rich. I think it's one of the most massive wastes in the world, but education is [at the] other end. It's the bearer of the greatest fruits that mankind has ever known.
Amartya Sen
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I think one big thing about the United States is that the American population, they may be excited about Iraq or one thing or another, but basically has had a great deal of interest in humanitarian causes both within the country and abroad. Even when they criticize the mechanism to which it flows.
Amartya Sen
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Education could be a great vehicle for gender equity. It allows people to see what your rights are by reading. Quite often women, for example, may have rights that they are not in the position to actually make use of.
Amartya Sen