Aung San Suu Kyi

If you're feeling helpless, help someone. __ Aung San Suu Kyi (from Freedom from Fear)

Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution.

There is a special charm to journeys undertaken before daybreak in hot lands: the air is soft and cool and the coming of dawn reveals a landscape fresh from the night dew.

In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued."(From a speech read on video on August 31, 1995 before the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, China)

It is not power that corrupts but fear.

To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.

Government leaders are amazing. So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

Some of the most relaxing weekends I have ever enjoyed were those I spent quietly with a sense of all work to date completed, and an absorbing mystery.

We are not out to boast that there is so much percentage of growth per year. Our real concern is how it affects the lives of people, the future of our country.

Whatever help we may want from the international community now or in the future, we want to make sure that this help is tailored to help our people to help themselves.

Human beings the world over need freedom and security that they may be able to realize their full potential.

Human beings want to be free and however long they may agree to stay locked up, to stay oppressed, there will come a time when they say 'That's it.' Suddenly they find themselves doing something that they never would have thought they would be doing, simply because of the human instinct that makes them turn their face towards freedom.

I think sometimes if you are alone, you are freer because your time is your own.

One person alone can't do anything as important as bringing genuine democracy to a country.

The democracy process provides for political and social change without violence.

Maybe it is something to do with age, but I have become fonder of poetry than of prose.