If you're dealing with grappling [with] problems of feeding people, the biggest impact in fertility reduction is girls' schools. Schooled girls make a bigger impact on that than any other factor - not these various regulations [such as] you have to have one child or that. It turns out that none of these are effective.

Human ordeals thrive on ignorance. To understand a problem with clarity is already half way towards solving it.

You can’t prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why don’t the governments stop them?

Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.

I'’m generally in favor of economic globalization. Having said that, it doesn’t always work and does not immediately work in the interest of all. There are sufferers.

I don't think poverty provides that much of an obstacle to education as one thinks. I think the bigger obstacle to education is the fact that it's a very hard thing to do for a first-generation schoolgoer. Because not to have parents at home who can help you, motivate you, is a problem even when the parents are in the abstract very keen on children being educated.

Even though I’m pro-globalization, I have to say thank God for the anti-globalization movement. They’re putting important issues on the agenda.