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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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Amartya Sen
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: November 3
Economist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Shantiniketan
Amartya Kumar Sen
Professor Amartya Kumar Sen
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Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty
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The notion of human right builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being. They differ, therefore, from constitutionally created rights guaranteed for specific people.
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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.
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The student community of Presidency College was also politically most active.
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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.
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I left Delhi, in 1971, shortly after Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published in 1970.
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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.
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I was told Indian women don't think like that about equality. But I would like to argue that if they don't think like that they should be given a real opportunity to think like that.
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To say that certainly America was very lucky to get a large amount of land, and the native Indians were extremely unlucky to have white men coming over here, is one thing. But to say that the whole of the American prosperity was based on exploiting the indigenous population would be a great mistake.
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There are Muslims of all kinds. The idea of closing them into a single identity is wrong.
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It seems to me to be kind of inescapable that one has to be interested in the issue of gender and gender equality. I don’t really expect any credit for going in that direction. It’s the only natural direction to go in. Why is it that some people don’t see that as so patently obvious as it should be?
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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.
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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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Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.
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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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I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another.
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.
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It was incredible to me that members of one community could kill members of another not for anything personal that they did but simply based on their identity.
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There are few subjects that match the social significance of women's education in the contemporary world.
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Gender inequality is not one problem, it's a collection of problems.
Amartya Sen