Quotes from Abhijit Banerjee

Whenever we try something new, mistakes will happen. Seemingly good ideas will fail and need to be re-thought.

Celebrate creativity and confidence in the face of adversity.

Our democratic culture does not prioritise protecting an individual's right to live life her way, especially if that is not our way or the way of the community.

Like many free market economists, with whom he had little else in common, Nehru seemed to believe that people will find a way to get their children educated.

The problem of getting from home to the metro, BRT or bus stop makes many people take their cars to work. Why not start a fleet of electric buses that just circle through neighbourhoods connecting them to the various public transport hubs?

In terms of being a professional, I want to be professional with everyone.

For me, psychologically, I am very much an Indian.

If you are a natural scientist, a publication the journal Science carries enormous prestige.

Even Milton Friedman - doyen of radical free market thought - was willing to consider some government intervention into primary education on the grounds that it is unfair for children to not get a chance in life because they were born to poor parents.

My guess is that while the elites would like cleaner air, they are not willing to give up the convenience of being able to use their cars at will to get it, perhaps because they believe (I suspect incorrectly) that they can protect themselves from the consequences of vehicular pollution by investing in air-conditioners and air purifiers.

If the BJP government, like the Congress party, had asked what were the numbers on the fraction of people under a particular income, would I have not told them the truth? I would have told them exactly. I would have been as willing.

We value seriousness and willingness to solve problems.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression.

When you compare individuals, rather than countries, you find that education improves both income and the quality of life.

Healthcare expenses often wipe out families.

I mean, I think it's a two-way relationship: I think you should not have too much faith in your own rationality. You should not have too much faith in the rationality of, you know, anybody else either. We all learn together about the way the world is, and I think it's a sort of antidote to wishful thinking of all kinds.

Good intentions and grand theories do not make a good programme. Programmes work best when they're based on a detailed und­er­standing of the problem being solved and how they are implemented on the ground.

Here is an entirely banal idea that I think has the potential to change the world: Take evidence seriously. Taking evidence seriously does not mean privileging numbers over all other forms of knowledge - theories, narratives, images. Nor does it mean the kind of radical skepticism that questions everything to the point where no action is possible.

I am half Bengali and half Marathi.

Celebrate the excitement of trying build something new and wonderful.

My sense of my own superiority over many of my classmates would have been much more muted if I knew that they had seen me failing miserably at woodwork or cross-stitch.

What's nice about experiments is that they are much more closely tied to what theorists think about the world than normal empirical research. You can design your experiment to exactly ask the question you want to ask. This is not true about normal empirical research.

So, I went to Harvard and I got exposed to American work habits. I didn't even realise for a while that I was behind. I kind of had the illusion that I was understanding things. But people worked so hard and the thing I learnt first in America was that people work incredibly hard.

We are specialists who have something special to say. We have had no problem with working in any state interested in evaluating their policies.