Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.

Education makes us the human beings we are. It has major impacts on economic development, on social equity, gender equity. In all kinds of ways, our lives are transformed by education and security. Even if it had not one iota of effect [on] security, it would still remain in my judgment the biggest priority in the world.

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

From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.

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.

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.

[To organize a school] looks much more difficult in theory than it does in practice.