Education can really transform the insecurities in the world into a bigger vision of what we are as human beings.

Globalization is a complex issue, partly because economic globalization is only one part of it. Globalization is greater global closeness, and that is cultural, social, political, as well as economic.

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

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.

Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.

Women had always been thought of as looking after the family when men go and earn an income and they're the bread earner and so on. So there is a kind of generation of inequality, [and], on top of the fact, women have pregnancies and periods, [and] when the children are very small, there are greater demands on their time. So one way or another women have had a pretty rough deal in the past, and there's no reason why that should continue, and any country that has tried to remedy that has succeeded in doing so.

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.