130 Quotes by Amartya Sen

I don’t think that India is much celebrated for its democracy. Democracy has been a very neglected commodity at home and abroad.

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.

I'’m generally in favor of economic globalization. Having said that, it doesn’t always work and does not immediately work in the interest of all. There are sufferers.

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.

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.

I remain instinctively hostile to communitarian philosophy and communitarian politics.

Opponents of globalisation may see it as a new folly, but it is neither particularly new, nor, in general, a folly.

There is considerable evidence that women's education and literacy tend to reduce the mortality rates of children

Development cannot really be so centered only on those in power.