I attempted to see famines as broad "economic" problems (concentrating on how people can buy food, or otherwise get entitled to it), rather than in terms of the grossly undifferentiated picture of aggregate food supply for the economy as a whole.

Belonging to humanity is a great thing for us, and I think the schools can do it. So I think we can look after the quality of education on the school even as we expand the availability of schooling.

In absolutely every way, our lives are transformed by education and basic education in particular. So I would have thought that in any kind of system, to say that the priorities don't include education is a mistake, whether it's [at the] domestic level or at the global level.

There are Muslims of all kinds. The idea of closing them into a single identity is wrong.

I remain instinctively hostile to communitarian philosophy and communitarian politics.

One has to be realistic. One’s concern for equity and justice in the world must not carry one into the alien territory of unreasoned belief. That’s very important.

If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.