Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen
Amartya Kumar Senis an Indian economist and philosopher of Bengali ethnicity, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, and indexes of the measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 and Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics. He...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth3 November 1933
CountryIndia
Amartya Sen quotes about
I loved that breadth, and also the fact that in interpreting Indian civilization itself, its cultural diversity was much emphasized.
The curriculum of the school did not neglect India's cultural, analytical and scientific heritage, but was very involved also with the rest of the world.
Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being
Empowering women is key to building a future we want
Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization.
Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver, but also broadens the giver - the teachers, the parents, the friends.
Progress is more plausibly judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent
Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger; or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses or the opportunity to be adequatley clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities.
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.
Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.
A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.
Opportunity could be defined in so many ways. There's one way of defining it, equality of opportunity, which is in fact the equality of capability, but the libertarians got there first and they have - like the Americans getting onto the moon, naming every crater after something like an astronaut - they have got there and named "opportunity" in a way that we cannot get ownership of now.
Human ordeals thrive on ignorance. To understand a problem with clarity is already half way towards solving it.
The increasing tendency towards seeing people in terms of one dominant ‘identity’ (‘this is your duty as an American’, ‘you must commit these acts as a Muslim’, or ‘as a Chinese you should give priority to this national engagement’) is not only an imposition of an external and arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups (to all of which he or she belongs).