Amartya Sen Quotes

I now talk to different cultures, and I hope that I can bridge those gaps and differences between us. It's an adventure, a dream... I feel like I'm on an anthropological mission.

I think cross-cultural dialogue is something that has hugely impacted the richness of the culture of our world.

Culture is this thing that we can exchange among ourselves as human beings to knock aside our differences and build upon our similarities. Cultural exchange is the ultimate exchange.

I serve like a bridge. I go to other cultures, learn, put myself in different situations and learn as much as I can, and then go to Western cultures to give. I'm doing this bridging all the time.

We must teach the next generation to not just learn languages, but whole cultures and belief systems. We will then make more of an effort to understand people and their different cultures.

The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives you I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see the structure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a sense of mental independence.

It is the quality and the character of the leader that determines the results and performance.

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

You're sort of forced to include this aspect of culture into your life whether it be for social reasons or business purposes.

I believe all societies, all thriving societies of the future are going to be multicultural societies.

Overall do I believe exchange with other cultures is good, people going back and forth is good, trade is good. Yes, all of these things are good. But I think you have to make sure the system's working. We need to know, virtually 100 percent of the time, when you come and when you leave. It's called entry and exit.

Foreign culture is as necessary to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries.

I don't believe in the clash of cultures. The culture is one. The culture is a ring off the same chain. Picasso was very much influenced by the African arts, and he influenced a whole other generation of artists. So everything influences everything.

Who better than an Irishman can understand the Indians, while still being stirred by tales of the US cavalry?

In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn't translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse.

I have my brain switched on and I might be thinking something else but we've come to an arrangement. That sort of play is maybe easier with someone who also thinks that way. But that is not necessarily a national thing, but maybe a little bit of a cultural thing.

If people invited Muslims into their home every week by way of a TV show would go a long way to making people feel comfortable with Muslims and countering misconceptions about who we are. Plus, of course, that will make it easier for us to impose sharia law across America.

People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America.

I asked myself, 'How are you going to change all these people, they have different values, different customs, different language, different interpretations?' So that’s the time I joined the Ku Klux Klan in Miami. The reason I joined is to see if I could change them. So I dissolved that organization in a month-and-a-half, alone. [Applause] Then I joined the White Citizen Council. The WCC hates foreigners – all foreigners. So I joined that organization; I dissolved it in one month.

It's always hard to talk about the culture that you are from, especially with Islam, it is a very sensitive subject and I don't want to be seen to be adding to the problems of Islam and the west.

Culture means the perfect and equal development of man on all sides.

Leadership ability determines a person's level of effectiveness.

The strength of any organization is a direct result of the strength of its leaders.

Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains.

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, and through them presses a wild motley throng, men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav. Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn, these bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Ttose, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws in street and alley. What strange tongues are loud accents of menace alien to our air, voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well to leave the gates unguarded?