There are few subjects that match the social significance of women's education in the contemporary world.
Amartya SenBut the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.
Amartya SenAn 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 SenThe market economy succeeds not because some people's interests are suppressed and other people are kept out of the market, but because people gain individual advantage from it.
Amartya SenFamines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence... they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and... a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have.
Amartya Sen