Quotes from Amartya Sen

Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all it's many forms. Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.

The success of a society is to be evaluated primarily by the freedoms that members of the society enjoy.

the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute

A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.

While I am interested both in economics and in philosophy, the union of my interests in the two fields far exceeds their intersection

A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.

While we cannot live without history, we need not live within it either.

It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality

Nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong.

Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.

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.

Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The removal of substantial unfreedoms, it is argued here, is constitutive of development.

If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.

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.

The World Bank has not invariably been my favorite organization. The power to do good goes almost always with the possibility to do the opposite, and as a professional economist, I have had occasions in the past to wonder whther the Bank could not have done very much better.

The purely rational economic man is, indeed, close to being a social moron.

Ashoka supplemented this general moral and political principle by a dialectical argument based on enlightened self-interest: 'For he who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own sect, in reality inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his own sect.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; … Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; … Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.53

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length.

Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror. The

I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another.

Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver, but also broadens the giver - the teachers, the parents, the friends.

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.

When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.