"Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being"
"If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You cant win many elections after a famine, and you dont like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act."
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Source: Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.
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"Economic growth without investment in human development is unsustainable - and unethical."
"Human development, as an approach, is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it."
"The success of a society is to be evaluated primarily by the freedoms that members of the society enjoy."
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