Amartya Sen

“But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.”

“While we cannot live without history, we need not live within it either.”

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

“I have not had any serious non-academic job.”

“To understand the world is never a matter of simply recording our immediate perceptions. Understanding inescapably involves reasoning.We have to 'read' what we feel and seem to see, and ask what those perceptions indicate and how we may take them into account without being overwhelmed by them. One issue relates to the reliability of our feelings and impressions. A sense of injustice could serve as a signal that moves us, but a signal does demand critical examination, and there has to be some scrutiny of the soundness of aconclusion based mainly on signals...We also have to ask what kinds of reasoning should count in the assessment of ethical and political concepts such as justice and injustice.”

“People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.”

“While I am interested both in economics and in philosophy, the union of my interests in the two fields far exceeds their intersection.”

“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.”

“A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.”

“An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great deal more cunning than wise. It can needlessly undermine the value of knowledge in satisfying curiosity and interest it significantly weakens one of the profound characteristics of human beings.”

“I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another.”

“When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.”

“The student community of Presidency College was also politically most active.”

“The curriculum of the school did not neglect India's cultural, analytical and scientific heritage, but was very involved also with the rest of the world.”

“It is also very engaging - and a delight - to go back to Bangladesh as often as I can, which is not only my old home, but also where some of my closest friends and collaborators live and work.”

“To understand the world is never a matter of simply recording our immediate perceptions. Understanding inescapably involves reasoning. We have to 'read' what we feel and seem to see, and ask what those perceptions indicate and how we may take them into account without being overwhelmed by them. One issue relates to the reliability of our feelings and impressions. A sense of injustice could serve as a signal that moves us, but a signal does demand critical examination, and there has to be some scrutiny of the soundness of a conclusion based mainly on signals…We also have to ask what kinds of reasoning should count in the assessment of ethical and political concepts such as justice and injustice.”

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