Amartya Sen Quotes

Peace is movement towards globality and universality of civilization

Commerce is the great civilizer. We exchange ideas when we exchange fabrics.

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.

All of us are citizens in a republic much larger than the Republic of America. It is the Republic of Letters, a realm of the mind that extends everywhere, without police, national boundaries, or disciplinary frontiers.

The power which the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.

Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally.

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world.

Well, I think, you know, the arts are really what - one of the things that make this country strong. We always think it's our economy or our military power, but in fact, I think it's our culture, our civilization, our ideas, our creativity.

I'd say that all nations have contact with the truth, and all religions have admirable people.

A dialogue among civilizations can be seen as a dialogue between the individual and the universal.

Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication - particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials.

In peace, the Middle East, the ancient cradle of civilization, will become invigorated and transformed. Throughout its lands there will be freedom of movement of people, of ideas, of goods.

The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.

It is through the European that civilization arrives ... precisely because of their superiority, the civilized people our responsible for an evolving world.

Ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition.

Civilization is the common possession of all who will assimilate and apply its principles …. No race or nation can pre-empt civilization any more than they can monopolize the atmosphere which surrounds the earth, or the waters which hold it in their liquid embrace.

Today we live in a global village but we don’t have our global elders to guide and inspire us.

The United States … has never been isolated, never can be isolated, and has no desire to be isolated. The people of the United States are not only ready but willing and desirous to help their fellow-men, especially those of western civilization, in any way that is possible.

It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

The Secretary-General must be a determined advocate for the values of tolerance and solidarity - universal values that are shared by cultures and religions around the globe.

Meeting people from different countries makes you realise that everyone around the world has the same needs and aspirations.

The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

Country [China] needs to continue opening up and keep connecting. It needs to realize that the world has become one. The old concept of isolation, the idea that you can solve your problems on your own does not work anymore - neither in cultural, economic, nor political terms.