But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years. Amartya Sen More Quotes by Amartya Sen More Quotes From Amartya Sen I think education has a bigger impact on the lives of people than absolutely anything else. Amartya Sen impactpeoplethinking 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 teenagechildrenyears In India, [in] the great documents like [the] Upanishads in eighth century B.C., you find some of the wisest [women] making great, learned speeches and then you worship them, but actually don't do very much about girls' education generally. So I think there has been a kind of dual presence of pain, respect, and saying you are great, etc., but not providing the basic facilities that make women able to lead the kind of life that they would like to and that men easily do. Amartya Sen paingirlmen Belonging to humanity is a great thing for us, and I think the schools can do it. So I think we can look after the quality of education on the school even as we expand the availability of schooling. Amartya Sen availabilityschoolthinking I think gender inequality is a problem that goes back a long, long time. In human society, as a whole, women have tended to have a kind of inferior position - very often combined with playing up women as great role [models]. Amartya Sen role-modelslongthinking Across the world, in Africa, Asia, Latin America, everywhere, there is a widespread recognition on the part of the parents, too, that the children's life will go much better by being educated. And that applies to girls as well as boys. Amartya Sen girllatinchildren The understanding that women are not inferior across the world, it's something that you can get from school, not only from the book but also from chatting with other kids. It's a big impact. One of the curious things is that even when - and this we found from studies - the schools are doing pretty badly in terms of their education, about mathematics and literature and language, going to school transformed people because I think the action of schooling, the activity, is very important. Amartya Sen kidsbookschool Thailand's economic development was driven by educational expansion. That has been a very dramatic factor, and South Asia had been pretty miserable in not learning from that experience. Amartya Sen asiaexpansioneducational There may be countries [where] there's no gender inequality in schooling, even in higher education, but [where there is] gender inequality in high business. Japan is a very good example of that. You might find cases in the United States where at one level women's equality has progressed tremendously. You don't have the kind of problem of higher women's mortality as you see in South Asia, North Africa, and East Asia, China, too, and yet for American women there are some fields in which equality hasn't yet come. Amartya Sen japanunited-statescountry I have not had any serious non-academic job. Amartya Sen academicseriousjobs I remain instinctively hostile to communitarian philosophy and communitarian politics. Amartya Sen hostilephilosophy China had managed to reduce their fertility to a large extent because of basic expansion of women's education, not because of the one-child family. Amartya Sen fertilityexpansionchildren 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 racegivingpeople 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. Amartya Sen incrediblescommunityidentity The fact that schools can actually be a major factor in cementing the world is a factor that's worth considering, the fact that we all have a shared human identity in addition to many other identities. Amartya Sen identityworldschool Its very easy to capture pictures of jubilant people in the street after the nuclear bomb. But there were no pictures of morose people sitting in their kitchens and living rooms. Amartya Sen kitchennuclearpeople An Arab activist can take pride in the Arab heritage of mathematics and science or he can take pride in his religion, and there's pride to be taken in both. But one of them could be exploited much more easily and has been in the context of world conflict. And the other is very difficult to do on the grounds that science and literature and mathematics have been among the uniting factors in the history of the world. Amartya Sen heritagepridetaken There's absolutely no reason why at the level of basic schooling that there should be any inequity whatsoever. And [that's] the first direction to go, [but] that need not prevent you from doing all the other equalities that you want. Amartya Sen levelswantneeds In absolutely every way, our lives are transformed by education and basic education in particular. So I would have thought that in any kind of system, to say that the priorities don't include education is a mistake, whether it's [at the] domestic level or at the global level. Amartya Sen prioritieslevelsmistake 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 militarycountrythinking
