"Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being"
"South Korea at the end of the Second World War had a very low level of literacy. But suddenly, like in Japan, they determined they were going in that direction. In 20 years' time, they had transformed themselves. So when people go on saying that it's all because of perennial culture, which you cannot change, that's not the way the South Korean economy was viewed before the war ended. But again within 30 years, people went on saying there's an ancient culture in Korea that has been pro-education, which is true."
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Source: Source: www.pbs.org
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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."
"Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity."
"I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another."