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.

The governments and the hard-headed military establishment and the general conservative part of America have never taken much interest in democracy, anyway.

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.

It’s scandalous when one thinks about the people who live in a world in which they need not be hungry, in which they need not die without medical care, in which they need not be illiterate, they need not feel hopeless and miserable so much of the time, and yet they are.

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

Human development, as an approach, is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it.

It is also very engaging - and a delight - to go back to Bangladesh as often as I can, which is not only my old home, but also where some of my closest friends and collaborators live and work.