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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

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

More quotes by Amartya Sen

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A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.
Amartya Sen
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I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another.
Amartya Sen
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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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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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[To organize a school] looks much more difficult in theory than it does in practice.
Amartya Sen
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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
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Human life depends not only on income but also on social opportunities, [for example] what the state does for educating.
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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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
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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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[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.
Amartya Sen
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Progress is more plausibly judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent
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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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Amartya Sen
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To say that the whole of the industrial experience of Europe and America just shows the rewards of exploiting the Third World is a gross simplification.
Amartya Sen
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The success of a society is to be evaluated primarily by the freedoms that members of the society enjoy.
Amartya Sen