Frases de Amartya Sen

„Dado lo que se puede lograr a través de una intervención inteligente y humana, es sorprendente cuán inactivas y engreídas están la mayoría de las sociedades sobre la prevalencia de la carga no compartida de la discapacidad.“

—  Amartya Sen

„Hay musulmanes de todo tipo. La idea de encuadrarlos a todos en una sola identidad es errónea.“

—  Amartya Sen

„El intercambio entre culturas diferentes no puede ser visto como una amenaza, cuando es algo amigable. Pero creo que la insatisfacción con la arquitectura general a menudo depende de la calidad del liderazgo.“

—  Amartya Sen

Fuente: Entrevista realizada por Mario Baudino, Amartya Sen: "Think a West tolerant intolerance against Muslims is wrong and dangerous,", La Stampa, 30 de enero de 2003

„Aunque el capitalismo es, en principio, fuertemente individualista, ha contribuido en la práctica a reforzar la tendencia a la integración, ya que ha hecho nuestras vidas cada vez más interdependientes. Por otra parte, el bienestar económico sin precedentes que ha producido en las economías modernas hizo que pudieran aceptarse obligaciones sociales que anteriormente nadie hubiera podido "permitirse.“

—  Amartya Sen

Fuente: Obra citada, Cap. 2.5, pág. 72.

„La democracia debe ser juzgada no solo por las instituciones que existen formalmente, sino por el grado en que se pueden escuchar las diferentes voces de diversas secciones de la gente.“

—  Amartya Sen

„… cuando se trata de determinar cómo puede avanzar la justicia, hay una necesidad básica de razonamiento público, que involucra argumentos procedentes de diferentes sectores y de puntos de vista divergentes. Un compromiso con los argumentos contrarios no implica, sin embargo, que debamos esperar ser capaces de resolver los motivos de conflicto en todos los casos y llegar a una posición consensuada en todas las cuestiones.“

—  Amartya Sen

Fuente: Amartya Sen: "La idea de justicia". Editorial Taurus, ISBN 978-84-306-0686-3, Página 392.

„De hecho, en la terrible historia de las hambrunas mundiales es difícil encontrar un caso en el que haya habido hambruna en un país con una prensa libre y una oposición activa dentro de un marco institucional democrático. […] La libertad negativa de la prensa y los partidos de la oposición para criticar, escribir y organizar la protesta puede ser muy eficaz en la protección de la libertad positiva elemental de la población más vulnerable.“

—  Amartya Sen

Fuente: Amartya Sen: "La libertad individual como compromiso social". Ediciones Abya-Yala. ISBN 9978-04-576-7, Capítulo 1.3, pág. 45)

„Aunque las economías socialistas, entre ellas las dirigidas por partidos comunistas en varias partes del mundo, han sido afectadas por los problemas económicos y políticos (incluyendo la opresión), las metas y los objetivos que previamente han atraído a la gente hacia el socialismo siguen siendo todavía importantes como lo eran hace cincuenta años. Los conceptos de justicia social también están constantemente renaciendo después de haber sido debilitados por las dificultades encontradas en la ejecución de diversos proyectos.“

—  Amartya Sen

Fuente: Obra citada, Cap. 2.5, pág. 71.

„[La globalización] ha enriquecido el mundo en sentido científico y cultural, y también ha beneficiado económicamente a muchas personas.“

—  Amartya Sen

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

—  Amartya Sen

„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.“

—  Amartya Sen, libro The Idea of Justice

Fuente: The Idea of Justice

„the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute“

—  Amartya Sen

Fuente: The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

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

—  Amartya Sen

„A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.“

—  Amartya Sen

„I personally have great skepticism about the theories extolling the wonders of "Asian values." They are often based on badly researched generalizations and frequently uttered by governmental spokesmen countering accusations of authoritarianism and violations of human rights (as happened spectacularly at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993).“

—  Amartya Sen

1990s, Foreword to The Passions and the Interests (1996)

„The Passions and the Interests does not have the policy urgency that a contribution to public decisions may enjoy (as Hirschman's The Strategy of Economic Development eminently does), nor the compulsive immediacy that the exigencies of practical reason generate (as Exit, Voice, and Loyalty superbly portrayed). What then is so special about this book? […] The answer lies not only in the recognition that Hirschman makes us see the ideological foundations of capitalism in a fresh way, but also in the remarkable fact that this freshness is derived from ideas that are more than two-hundred-years old. The basic hypothesis— the articulation and development of which Hirschman investigates—makes the case for capitalism rest on the belief that "it would activate some benign human proclivities at the expense of some malignant ones."“

—  Amartya Sen

1990s, Foreword to The Passions and the Interests (1996)

„Ken also identified the corporation, not “the market,” as the defining institution of modern economic activity, developing these and related themes both in his teaching and in such widely celebrated books as American Capitalism (1952) and The New Industrial State (1967). But his interest in these ideas persisted throughout his life. The central importance of the corporation, and the fear that government was no longer able to provide an adequate countervailing force against corporate influence exerted both legally and otherwise, was the subject of his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud“

—  Amartya Sen

2004
Stephen A. Marglin, Richard Parker, Amartya Sen, and Benjamin M. Friedman, “John Kenneth Galbraith”, Harvard Gazette (February 7, 2008)
2000s

„Central to the Smithian approach is our willingness to see critically what we observe around us. The sense of comfort that is often associated with being content with the world as it is can seriously hamper the pursuit of justice. This understanding goes strongly against a line of thought that was powerfully presented by Friedrich Nietzshe. ‘The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad’, said Nietzshe. I think I can, with some effort, understand what Nietzsche meant, but it is hard for me, even with a lot of effort, to see that Nietzshe’s hypothesis helps us to understand the causation or resilience of the nastiness of the world in which we live. Nor, I must insist (this I do as a thoroughly unreligious person), does it offer any obvious insight into the lives and achievements of Martin Luther King, or Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, who have tried to reduce injustice in the world and have done so with non-negligible success.“

—  Amartya Sen

“Values and justice”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2012, 101–108
2010s, “Values and Justice”, 2012

„That austerity is a counterproductive economic policy in a situation of economic recession can be seen, rightly, as a “Keynesian critique.” Keynes did argue—and persuasively—that to cut public expenditure when an economy has unused productive capacity as well as unemployment owing to a deficiency of effective demand would tend to have the effect of slowing down the economy further and increasing—rather than decreasing—unemployment. Keynes certainly deserves much credit for making that rather basic point clear even to policymakers, irrespective of their politics, and he also provided what I would call a sketch of a theory of explaining how all this can be nicely captured within a general understanding of economic interdependences between different activities… I am certainly supportive of this Keynesian argument, and also of Paul Krugman’s efforts in cogently developing and propagating this important perspective, and in questioning the policy of massive austerity in Europe.
But I would also argue that the unsuitability of the policy of austerity is only partly due to Keynesian reasons. Where we have to go well beyond Keynes is in asking what public expenditure is for—other than for just strengthening effective demand, no matter what its content. As it happens, European resistance to savage cuts in public services and to indiscriminate austerity is not based only, or primarily, on Keynesian reasoning. The resistance is based also on a constructive point about the importance of public services—a perspective that is of great economic as well as political interest in Europe.“

—  Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen, "What Happened to Europe?", New Republic (August 2, 2012)
2010s