Amartya Sen Quotes

In a pluralistic society, no group, no matter how numerous or powerful, has a right to prescribe a set of beliefs or a code of ethics for all.

Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.’

I have been in dialogue with my family about what can actually be done. We've come up with this philosophy that in a truly multicultural society, the only way to have liberty and justice for everybody is to have multiple parties. And by multiple parties, I mean 50 parties, not one or two.

The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.

Canada is the homeland of equality, justice and tolerance.

I'm an extreme libertarian, but I realize we're in a democracy, and in a democracy, people can have views of all stripes, and there's no reason to argue about it.

A free society means that you might have to put up with a lot of things you despise.

Above all, democracy means pluralism.

In today's restless world, America needs to identify with the quest for universal human dignity, a dignity that embodies both freedom and democracy but also implies respect for cultural diversity.

We cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity.

That's the beauty of democracy — you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and as long as we're not hurting each other, that's fine. Placing a value judgment on a person's beliefs has no place in a democracy.

The main hope of harmony in our troubled world lies rather in the plurality of our identities, which intertwine with each other and are resistant to drastic divisions

Today’s China is a much more diversified society. You can find all kinds of views.

It's a big, complicated democracy, and one of the strengths of our country is... its rich diversity.

Britain is an open and tolerant country, and I will fight with everything I have to keep it so.

We're all not going to agree on the same things, but that's what makes this country so great.

The fabric of our Constitution and our civilisational culture is based on tolerance.

The challenge for America is: can we become a multicultural, multiracial democracy? It would be historic. It would be America's greatest contribution to human civilization.

Every now and then, you get people who tend to forget what this country is about, which is a melting pot of races and cultures and freedom of speech.

Jews are no longer pressed and obliged to fight, hide or deny their Jewishness. What for? No one actually requires today to abandon the idiosyncrasy of some other culture or ethnic tradition. The great achievement of this last period is that we have been slowly, sometimes reluctantly, yet steadily, learning the art of living with differences.

We can all live under the Constitution and all express ourself in radically different ways and not control each other.

As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

There are many pointers in the Bible concerning the rightness, the goodness, the beauty, the justice, the preciousness of racial harmony and diversity.

Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts.

The very moment you understand that being a Muslim and being American or European are not mutually exclusive, you enrich your society. Promote the universal principles of justice and freedom, and leave the societies elsewhere to find their model of democracy based on their collective psychology and cultural heritage.