Aung San Suu Kyi Quotes

We learned in World War II that no single nation holds a monopoly on wisdom, morality or right to power, but that we must fight for the weak and promote democracy.

Democracy without morality is impossible.

I think when the people in Burma stop thinking about whether or not they're free, it'll mean that they're free.

Government by blackmail is incompatible with democracy.

Democracy is just a reflection of our morals and the things that we believe.

My experience and what scant understanding of politics I possess have convinced me that our peoples will only find well-being under compulsion; but my repugnance for compulsion is so great that I am loath to employ it even to achieve their well-being.

This country will never sacrifice humanity in order to carry out any policy.

I have never regarded politics as an arena of morals. It is the arena of interests.

The loggers are more powerful than we are …. There is bribery everywhere.

This case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that result when large numbers of the politically powerless are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and controlled by a politically powerful few.

… neither the sanctions of international law nor the justice of a cause can be depended upon for a fair settlement of differences, when they come into conflict with a strong political necessity on the one side opposed to comparative weakness on the other.

… morality ends where the gun begins.

It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.

Bullying is the result of an unequal power dynamic - the strong attacking the weak.

Pity, but never love bestows kind words upon the slave.

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.

In the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.

My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.

We pray that Aung San Suu Kyi and her country are now on a path to freedom

Forgiveness is commendable, but apply not ointment to the wound of an oppressor.

In a democracy, you believe it or not; in a dictatorship, you believe it or else.

What does he stand for?

First there is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed, and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation.

The torch of liberty is hot; warms those who hold it high; burns those who try to extinguish it.

Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff.