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I guess some of the most delightful moments of my teenage years were when I was trying not just to educate myself but trying to educate others. And I could see how the lives of children could be transformed in that.

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
Transformed
Guess
Lives
Moments
Others
Children
Teenage
Trying
Delightful
Years
Educate

More quotes by Amartya Sen

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If the knowledge of torture of others makes you sick, it is a case of sympathy... It can be argued that behaviour based on sympathy is in an important sense egoistic, for one is oneself pleased at others' pleasure and pained at others' pain, and the pursuit of one's own utility may thus be helped by sympathetic action.
Amartya Sen
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We might have reason to be driven! We live for a short stretch of time in a world we share with others. Virtually everything we do is dependent on others, from the arts and culture to farmers who grow the food we eat.
Amartya Sen
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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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Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror.
Amartya Sen
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A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.
Amartya Sen
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If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can’t win many elections after a famine, and you don’t like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.
Amartya Sen
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From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.
Amartya Sen
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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?
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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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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Empowering women is key to building a future we want
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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People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.
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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Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver, but also broadens the giver - the teachers, the parents, the friends.
Amartya Sen
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Democracy is a universal value
Amartya Sen
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Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty
Amartya Sen
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we must go on fighting for basic education for all, but also emphasize the importance of the content of education. We have to make sure that sectarian schooling does not convert education into a prison, rather than being a passport to the wide world.
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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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