Quote

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

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
Territory
Carry
Concern
Justice
Belief
Equity
Must
Alien
Important
Aliens
World
Realistic

More quotes by Amartya Sen

Image
Education makes human beings more articulate. It transforms people. You can think differently about the world. It makes it possible for you to get jobs. It makes a dramatic difference. It generates a social equity that we need.
Amartya Sen
Image
A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.
Amartya Sen
Image
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
Image
Economic growth without investment in human development is unsustainable - and unethical.
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
If you're dealing with grappling [with] problems of feeding people, the biggest impact in fertility reduction is girls' schools. Schooled girls make a bigger impact on that than any other factor - not these various regulations [such as] you have to have one child or that. It turns out that none of these are effective.
Amartya Sen
Image
But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.
Amartya Sen
Image
I think in those countries, including my own in India, where I think primary education has been badly neglected by successive governments, I blame the opposition as much. Why have they allowed the government to get away with it?
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
Across the world, in Africa, Asia, Latin America, everywhere, there is a widespread recognition on the part of the parents, too, that the children's life will go much better by being educated. And that applies to girls as well as boys.
Amartya Sen
Image
The lack of economic freedom could be a very major reason for loss of liberty, liberty of life.
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
Education can really transform the insecurities in the world into a bigger vision of what we are as human beings.
Amartya Sen
Image
[To organize a school] looks much more difficult in theory than it does in practice.
Amartya Sen
Image
Democracy is a universal value
Amartya Sen
Image
It’s very easy to capture pictures of jubilant people in the street after the nuclear bomb. But there were no pictures of morose people sitting in their kitchens and living rooms.
Amartya Sen
Image
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
Image
Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means.
Amartya Sen
Image
Even in areas like the most depressed region of India in terms of female education, namely Rajasthan, which has [one of] the lowest female literacy [rates] in India. Even there, 80 to 90 percent of the parents would like their girls to go to school. And indeed, about 80 percent would like them to be made compulsory.
Amartya Sen
Image
A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.
Amartya Sen