Quotes from Amartya Sen

Kita akan sanggup mengubah suatu kebudayaan dengan cara memberikan para perempuan anak bangsa alat yang tepat untuk tumbuh terdidik agar mereka dapat menolong diri sendiri. (Amartya Sen)

But that reflects a basic misunderstanding of how science proceeds and why the borders of scientific knowledge are not drawn along geographical lines.

It is the interactive presence of these two features of deprivation – being low class and being female – that can massively impoverish women from the less privileged classes.

Ancient India cannot be fitted into the narrow box where the Hindutva activists want to incarcerate it.

one must go through war to reach peace.4

An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great deal more cunning than wise. It can needlessly undermine the value of knowledge in satisfying curiosity and interest; it significantly weakens one of the profound characteristics of human beings.

Bengali poem by Ram Mohun Roy which bears on the subject matter of this essay.* Roy explains what is really dreadful about death: Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be. Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue back.

What is needed is not a rejection of the positive role of the market mechanism in generating income and wealth, but the important recognition that the market mechanism has to work in a world of many institutions. We need the power and protection of these institutions, provided by democratic practice, civil and human rights, a free and open media, facilities for basic education and health care, economic safety nets, and of course, provisions for women's freedom and rights

One important aspect of it was his willingness to accept that many questions may be unresolved even after our best efforts, and our answers may remain incomplete.

Though Buddhism is a religion like any other, it began with at least two specific characteristics that were quite unusual, to wit, its foundational agnosticism and its commitment to public communication and discussion.

Las decisiones sobre asuntosimportantes no las debe tomar una sola persona. Deben discutirse entre muchas.

I consider the three years I spent in Santiniketan as the most fruitful of my life…. Santiniketan opened my eyes for the first time to the splendours of Indian and Far Eastern art. Until then I was completely under the sway of Western art, music and literature. Santiniketan made me the combined product of East and West that I am.24

It is, however, important to avoid the much-aired simplification that argues that all India needs to do to achieve fast economic growth and speedy reduction of poverty is greater reliance on the global market and on international trade.

On being invited to the Jaipur Festival, I was naturally nervous about attempting an opening address to such an elite gathering.

It is hard to escape the general conclusion that economic performance, social opportunity and political voice are deeply interrelated.

It is, in particular, important to distinguish between the inclusionary role of identity and the exclusionary force of separatism.

It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it... And just in case thou art not all that, we will fix it with a bit of cleverness in reconstructing reality!

Effective elementary education has in practice ceased to be free in substantial parts of the country, which of course is a violation of a basic right.

Unaimed opulence, in general, is a roundabout, undependable, and wasteful way of improving the living standards of the poor.

We all seem to be affected by desire, anger, fear, sorrow, worry, hunger, and labour; how do we have caste differences then?

I still practise her remedy for hiccups – slowly drinking a glass of cold water with a couple of spoons of sugar stirred in. This, incidentally, is a much pleasanter way of overcoming hiccups than by choking yourself out of breath.

A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.

Human life depends not only on income but also on social opportunities, [for example] what the state does for educating.

The lack of economic freedom could be a very major reason for loss of liberty, liberty of life.