One of the things that any kind of studies bring out is that the mere act of schooling - getting together, the organization involved, going to classes on time, and there're things being taught, sitting down with others with different backgrounds, chatting with them, and, sometimes when there are big barriers, eating together when there are school meals, which are big things together with a big social impact - they themselves have a major effect.

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

[N]o democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine.

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.

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

I think that so many of our abilities to do things depend on interaction with each other.

You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable.