Amartya Sen Quotes

America is a great country. We are so wealthy. But our one remaining challenge is to fulfill the potential of all our people. And the only way we can do that is to try to bring everybody together to a higher place.

Are we a nation of guarantees or are we a nation of opportunities to achieve the American dream?

For much of the latter part of the 20th century, Australia seemed to be opening up to something large and good. It believed itself a generous country, the land of the 'fair go.'

There is no office now closed to a Jew, including the presidency.

I want my people to live like white people and have the same chance… we want to travel the same road as the white man.

Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.

In America, opportunity and equality are not a zero-sum game

We hold the view that all men are created equal." Now, what did they mean by that? Did they mean, my friends, to say that all men were created equal and that that meant that any one man was born to inherit $10 billion and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing? Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than it and all of its children and children's children could every dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation?

In a country where there is no privileged class, genius and industry may attain the highest honors.

If you wish the Jews to become better men and useful citizens, then banish every humiliating restriction, open to them every avenue of gaining a livelihood.

Individualism is to collectivism as capitalism is to socialism

By 'Freedom' for Negroes, I meant and still mean, full economic, political and Social equality with American citizens, in thought, expression and action, with no discrimination based on race or color.

We Americans have always believed in freedom of opportunity, and equality of opportunity remains one of the principal objectives of our national life. What we believe in for individuals, we believe in also for nations. We are opposed to restrictions, whether by public act or private arrangement, which distort and impair commerce, transit and trade. We have house cleaning of our own to do in this regard. But it is our hope, not only in the interest of our own prosperity but in the interest of the prosperity of the world, that trade and commerce and access to materials and markets may be freer after this war than ever before in the history of the world.

... there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.

Emancipation at one stroke elevates the poor white of the South, and identifies his interest with that of the Northern laborer.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they assumed that the country’s vast resources would ensure equality of opportunity. Worried instead about stability, they enshrined in the Constitution another principle: that property rights must be protected.

Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.

The Jacksonians were libertarians, plain and simple. Their program and ideology were libertarian; they strongly favored free enterprise and free markets, but they just as strongly opposed special subsidies and monopoly privileges conveyed by government to business or to any other group.

We do have to ask ourselves as a culture, what do we want to be? You know, what are our founding values? And if we are a society where everybody should have that fair shot and get a second chance, then we should take the necessary steps to implement that and make it a reality.

Nationalism has nothing to do with the rule of law, justice, or opportunity.

For the Bharatiya Janata Party, Gandhian socialism is what we want to achieve and make society free of exploitation and full of opportunities.

As Americans, I think we really believe that with the meritocracy that exists in our country, the equality of opportunity is so important to the foundation of our culture and our society.

Americans have bravely risen to overcome great challenges, but we still have a long way to go to ensure that everyone shares in the freedom to dream of and achieve a better life for themselves and their kids.

Let's remember what truly unites us. It's a common belief in a better economic future. A belief in a meritocracy.

I want my kids to grow up in a world where everybody gets a fair shot.