Amartya Sen Quotes

Each human being is a citizen of the world. We have many identities, of which one of the identities is our human identity. And that's something that the schools can provide, but that requires again a vision rather than being centers of hatred. It could be an enormous opportunity to give that mission.

If a harmonious relationship is established amongst societies and religious beliefs in today's multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural world, then it will surely set a very good example for others.

So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the 'global village' we would propagate prejudice and ignorance. There was absolutely no harm in being part of a small group - indeed, with our hunter-gatherer band mentality it gave comfort, provided us with an inner circle of friends who could be utterly trusted, who were absolutely reliable. It helped give us peace of mind. The danger came only from drawing that sharp line, digging that ditch, laying that minefield, between our own group and any other group that thought differently.

Racial and denominational schools impart to the membership of their communities something which the general educational institution is wholly unable to inculcate.

I don't believe in frontiers, and I don't believe in races or nationalities.

There is an insuperable problem about introducing immigrants to British values. There are no British values. Nor are there any Serbian or Peruvian values. No nation has a monopoly on fairness and decency, justice and humanity.

Indians should associate with English youths in a mixed school, and should be removed entirely from native influences.

Britishness has got to be the foundation of the multicultural society in this country. Anything less than this is farcical and treacherous.

The question really isn't whether I'm American, Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani, or anything else. I've been shaped by all these people and cultures and I feel quite comfortable among all of them

I never felt that I belonged. When I was at school... First I went to a Jewish school, when I was very little. But when I was 12, they put me in a school with a lot of traditions, and they were educated people and they were talking about Greece and the Parthenon and I don't know what.

If the world is the body, India is its soul.

We are all cells in the body of humanity - all of us, all over the world. Each one has a contribution to make, and will know from within what this contribution is.

The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

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.

There is no alternative to the peaceful coexistence of cultures.

These issues that exist among people that we are Iranian and what we need to do for Iran are not correct; these issues are not correct. This issue, which is perhaps being discussed everywhere, regarding paying attention to nation and nationality is nonsense in Islam and is against Islam. One of the things that the designers of Imperialism and their agents have promoted is the idea of nation and nationality.

The world only makes sense to me given my life and my background if, in fact, we're not just an assortment of tribes that can never understand each other, but that we're, rather, one common humanity that can meet and learn and love each other.

Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.

We can think of solutions in various theoretical ways, but it's not so on the ground. If they don't have a reference that helps them to belong, then they will end up excluding, and through that they get to feel that they belong on the basis of some narrow identity, language or color.

I was interested in immigration and I wanted to use that in the film, not necessarily to talk about immigrants, although I wanted to do that, but to talk about ourselves through the eyes of an immigrant. The film takes place in the school and it tells us a little bit about who we are and where we're at, but through the eyes of someone who has a different background.

Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks

Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.

The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation. When a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes a lion.

The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.

I think one can live in American society with a certain cultural heritage, whether it's an African heritage or other, European,what have you, and still absorb a great deal of this culture. There is always cultural assimilation.