Nearly everywhere Buddhism went, there had been a higher level of literacy, even in miserable Burma, not to mention Thailand and Sri Lanka.

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.

I left Delhi, in 1971, shortly after Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published in 1970.

I think in those countries, including my own in India, where I think primary education has been badly neglected by successive governments, I blame the opposition as much. Why have they allowed the government to get away with it?

I think the UN's role - especially since it's not an extremely rich fund, and that's to put it mildly - is mainly to act as a leading thinker of the world in terms of how to think about the future.

It seems to me to be kind of inescapable that one has to be interested in the issue of gender and gender equality. I don’t really expect any credit for going in that direction. It’s the only natural direction to go in. Why is it that some people don’t see that as so patently obvious as it should be?

A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.