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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.

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
Life
Community
Capability
People
Fact
Inequality
Facts
Connection
Thought
Income
Part
Connections
Take
Resources
Think
Concerned
Sustainable
Thinking
Poverty
Adequate

More quotes by 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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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
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Opponents of globalisation may see it as a new folly, but it is neither particularly new, nor, in general, a folly.
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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Capability is just a concept of what is it we're looking at. Now how far we can go along that and what new capabilities become possible is something we have to judge.
Amartya Sen
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Belonging to humanity is a great thing for us, and I think the schools can do it. So I think we can look after the quality of education on the school even as we expand the availability of schooling.
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 is considerable evidence that women's education and literacy tend to reduce the mortality rates of children
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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No substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic country - no matter how poor.
Amartya Sen
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Poverty is not just a lack of money it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being
Amartya Sen
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Women's education has a much greater impact [on], for example, fertility. Men's education, if our studies are correct, ha[s] almost no impact on fertility. Women's do. So, by the way, as a man, it's not to the glory of men specifically that it's women's education that reduces child mortality.
Amartya Sen
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Gender inequality is not one problem, it's a collection of problems.
Amartya Sen
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The market economy succeeds not because some people's interests are suppressed and other people are kept out of the market, but because people gain individual advantage from it.
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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You can’t prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why don’t the governments stop them?
Amartya Sen
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Human life consists of doing certain things ... to take part in the life of the community to be able to talk about subjects that interest me and there freedom of speech comes into it.
Amartya Sen
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the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute
Amartya Sen
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A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.
Amartya Sen
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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