Amartya Sen Quotes About Democracy

Quotes about: Democracy

• No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.

  Amartya Sen

  Taken, Democracy, World

  Amartya Sen (2011). “The Idea of Justice”, p.343, Harvard University Press

• Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence... they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and... a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have.

  Amartya Sen

  Country, Party, Independent

  "The 'Silently' Creeping Famine" by Alemayehu G. Mariam, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 18, 2010.

• [N]o democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine.

  Amartya Sen

  Democracy, Famine, Free Press

• Democracy is a universal value

  Amartya Sen

  Democracy, Universal, Values

• If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can’t win many elections after a famine, and you don’t like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.

  Amartya Sen

  Party, Winning, Government

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

• I don’t think that India is much celebrated for its democracy. Democracy has been a very neglected commodity at home and abroad.

  Amartya Sen

  Home, Thinking, Democracies Have

• The governments and the hard-headed military establishment and the general conservative part of America have never taken much interest in democracy, anyway.

  Amartya Sen

  Military, Taken, Government

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin