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It’s scandalous when one thinks about the people who live in a world in which they need not be hungry, in which they need not die without medical care, in which they need not be illiterate, they need not feel hopeless and miserable so much of the time, and yet they are.

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
Time
Care
Scandalous
Thinking
Live
Illiterate
World
Without
Hopeless
People
Need
Miserable
Feel
Medical
Feels
Hungry
Needs
Thinks
Much
Dies

More quotes by Amartya Sen

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The Arab world is also the world that produced some of the greatest improvements in mathematics and in science. Even today, when a Princeton mathematician does an algorithm, he may not remember that algorithm derived from the name al-Khwarizmi, who is a ninth-century Arab mathematician.
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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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
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Even though I’m pro-globalization, I have to say thank God for the anti-globalization movement. They’re putting important issues on the agenda.
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 attempted to see famines as broad economic problems (concentrating on how people can buy food, or otherwise get entitled to it), rather than in terms of the grossly undifferentiated picture of aggregate food supply for the economy as a whole.
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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There are Muslims of all kinds. The idea of closing them into a single identity is wrong.
Amartya Sen
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We need to ask the moral questions: Do I have a right to be rich? And do I have a right to be content living in a world with so much poverty and inequality? These questions motivate us to view the issue of inequality as central to human living.
Amartya Sen
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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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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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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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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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Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty
Amartya Sen
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Education makes us the human beings we are. It has major impacts on economic development, on social equity, gender equity. In all kinds of ways, our lives are transformed by education and security. Even if it had not one iota of effect [on] security, it would still remain in my judgment the biggest priority in the world.
Amartya Sen
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I'’m generally in favor of economic globalization. Having said that, it doesn’t always work and does not immediately work in the interest of all. There are sufferers.
Amartya Sen
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Globalization is a complex issue, partly because economic globalization is only one part of it. Globalization is greater global closeness, and that is cultural, social, political, as well as economic.
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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[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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The lack of economic freedom could be a very major reason for loss of liberty, liberty of life.
Amartya Sen