Aung San Suu Kyi Quotes

For years, Taiwan has been dominated politically by a single party, the Kuomintang. People now want the place to be more democratic. They want to place more emphasis on human rights and transparency in terms of government decision-making. This is different from the way the government conducted business in the days when this was pretty much an authoritarian place.

Macau is democratic and free enough.. it's prosperous enough. Why do people need to do this?.

We do need great change in Burma. We are trying to build a new society, a society where basic human rights are respected, and where our people enjoy all the benefits of democratic institutions.

The list of non-democratic regimes that have seen significant reforms since 2001 is long and significant.

The free world should not wait for dictatorial regimes to consent to reform.

For politics to change … culture must change too --- and that takes much more than dispatching troops, holding elections, and writing constitutions.

My goal for the Arab world is to change the status quo, which is horrible politically, religiously, economically, in every way.

Democratization was not a slogan, but the essence of Perestroika.

China after Olympics will progress very slowly. But the demands for freedom - on the part of ordinary people but also party members - won't be as easy to contain.

This is the democratic process at work, What you're seeing with this process is the Iraqi people embracing American-style democracy.

In a democratic society, as Max Weber said, what is possible is only possible because some people have demanded the impossible. The abolitionists helped to create a public discourse in which men like Lincoln become possible. That doesn't mean Lincoln is an abolitionist. It means there is a public opinion out there which is being influenced by antislavery sentiment.

The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity but also those of the human spirit - a spirit that demands self-expression .

The same thing will happen in China that happened in Chile. Political freedom will ultimately break out of its shackles. Tiananmen Square was only the first episode. It is headed for a series of Tiananmen Squares. It cannot continue to develop privately and at the same time maintain its authoritarian character politically. It is headed for a clash. Sooner or later, one or the other will give.

The rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.

We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we've treated the Arab world as just an oil field.

I still oppose "Visit Myanmar Year," and I would ask tourists to stay away. Burma is not going to run away. They should come back to Burma at a time when it is a democratic society where people are secure - where there is justice, where there is rule of law. They'll have a much better time. And they can travel around Burma with a clear conscience.

What Tunisia urgently needs, is freedom and the building of a real democracy.

I do believe that the party needs to evolve, or I won't be a part of it.

When people first vote for democracy, they have extremely high hopes, excessive expectations, and they're not realized. They don't instantly get richer and the schools don't instantly get better and the garbage isn't instantly picked up quicker. So they get disillusioned.

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.

The freedom of speech is an important yardstick for a society's level of civilization.

Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men.

In Burma, we need to find out what we have to do in order to keep the democratization process on track. Economic reforms have to be taken one by one. You see it's not just speed that's important, it's sequencing as well. You've got to get the speed right; you have to get the sequencing right.

I do not have much confidence in the political system and never did. My goal has always been to change people's minds because as long as people demand more government, they will get it.

We have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.