Top 100 Aung San Suu Kyi Quotes
#1. Sometimes, 24 hours can bring a total revolutionary change.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#2. All repressive laws must be revoked, and laws introduced to protect the rights of the people.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#3. I don't believe in professional dissidents. I think it's just a phase, like adolescence.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#4. After all it was my father who founded the Burmese army and I do have a sense of warmth towards the Burmese army.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#5. 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.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#6. All military regimes use security as the reason why they should remain in power. It's nothing original.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#7. I don't think you can work on feelings in politics, apart from anything else, political change can come very unexpectedly, sometimes overnight when you least expect it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#8. I do protect human rights, and I hope I shall always be looked up as a champion of human rights.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#9. Investment that only goes to enrich an already wealthy elite bent on monopolizing both economic and political power cannot contribute toward egalite and justice
the foundation stones for a sound democracy.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#11. The good ruler sublimates his needs as an individual to the service of the nation.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#12. We want to empower our people; we want to strengthen them; we want to provide them with the kind of qualifications that will enable them to build up their own country themselves.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#14. A lot of the roads, bridges, railways, and such are built through the use of forced labor, and that is causing the people great suffering. What we put into this in the form of human suffering is not worth what comes out of it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#15. Every government must consider the security of the country. That is just part of the responsibilities of any government. But true security can only come out of unity within a country where there are so many ethnic nationalities.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#16. When the Nobel Committee chose to honor me, the road I had chosen of my own free will became a less lonely path to follow.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#17. Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#19. I was a bit of a coward when I was small. I was terribly frightened of the dark.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#20. 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.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#21. Freedom must be demanded and defended, by those who have been denied it and by those who are already free
Aung San Suu Kyi
#22. I think I was the healthiest prisoner of conscience in the world.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#23. What does Burma have to give the United States? We can give you the opportunity to engage with people who are ready and willing to change a society.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#24. The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#25. It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#26. Once serious political dialogue has begun, the international community can assume that we have achieved genuine progress along the road to real democratisation.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#27. I could listen to the radio and I had access to books from time to time. Not all the time.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#28. Regime is made up of people, so I do put faces to regimes and governments, so I feel that all human beings have the right to be given the benefit of the doubt, and they also have to be given the right to try to redeem themselves if they so wish.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#29. I don't believe in people just hoping. We work for what we want. I always say that one has no right to hope without endeavor, so we work to try and bring about the situation that is necessary for the country, and we are confident that we will get to the negotiation table at one time or another.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#30. The quintessential revolution is that of spirit. Without this, the forces which produce the inequalities of the old order will continue to operate.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#31. 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.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#32. With the right kind of institutions, starting with the rule of law, Burma could progress very quickly.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#33. You have a great many things to do when you are under house arrest. On the one hand, it is more comfortable than sitting in prison; on the other hand, you have to look after a household, which is strenuous under such circumstances.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#38. I don't want to see the military falling. I want to see the military rising to dignified heights of professionalism and true patriotism.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#39. You may not think about politics, but politics think about you.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#40. How can you call it a sacrifice when you choose to do something because you believe in it?
Aung San Suu Kyi
#41. You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#42. I was a prisoner, but I always felt free because I was not frightened So for me real freedom is freedom from fear.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#43. The French say that to part is to die a little. To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#44. The greatest gift for an individual or a nation ... was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#45. My opinion is the greatest reward that any government could get is the approval of the people. If the people are happy and the people are at peace and the government has done something for them, that's the greatest reward I think any government could hope for.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#46. Fires of suffering and strife are raging around the world.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#48. It is undeniably easier to ignore the hardships of those who are too weak to demand their rights than to respond sensitively to their needs. To care is to accept responsibility, to dare to act in accordance with the dictum that the ruler is the strength of the helpless.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#49. What I have experienced is nothing compared to what political prisoners in prisons suffer.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#50. Since we live in this world, we have to do our best for this world.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#51. Even one voice can be heard loudly all over the world in this day and age.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#52. I don't like to be called a symbol. And I don't like to be called an icon. I will just say that I have to work very, very hard. So I'd rather be known as a hard worker. I don't think symbols do much, nor icons.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#53. I've always tried to explain democracy is not perfect. But it gives you a chance to shape your own destiny.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#55. As we strive to teach others we must have the humility to acknowledge that we too still have much to learn.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#57. It would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#59. Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#60. More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves - they can't depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#61. Burmese authors and artists can play the role that artists everywhere play. They help to mold the outlook of a society - not the whole outlook, and they are not the only ones to mold the outlook of society, but they have an important role to play there.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#62. The people have given me their support; they have given me their trust and confidence. My colleagues have suffered a lot in order to give me support. I do not look upon my life as a sacrifice at all.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#63. I was heartened that people everywhere want certain basic freedoms, even if they live in a totally different cultural environment.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#64. I've been repeating ad nauseam that we in Burma, we are weak with regard to the culture of negotiated compromises, that we have to develop the ability to achieve such compromises.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#65. I think when the people in Burma stop thinking about whether or not they're free, it'll mean that they're free.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#66. I'm not the only one working for democracy in Burma - there are so many people who have worked for it because they believe that this is the only way we can maintain the dignity of our people.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#67. Perhaps Singapore could learn from us a more relaxed way of life.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#72. I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#73. I think, if you have enough inner resources, then you can live in isolation for long periods of time and not feel diminished by it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#74. Government leaders are amazing. So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#75. Religion is about increasing peace and harmony in the world ... People of all different religions should be given the opportunity to pursue good in their own way.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#76. It cannot be doubted that in most countries today women, in comparison to men, still remain underprivileged.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#77. We must make democracy the popular creed ... If we should fail to do this, our people are bound to suffer ... That is what my father said. It is the reason why I am participating in this struggle.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#78. I don't think of myself as unbreakable. Perhaps I'm just rather flexible and adaptable.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#79. Despotic governments do not recognize the precious human component of the state, seeing its citizens only as a faceless, mindless
and helpless
mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its very life-blood.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#80. It could achieve a lot if everyone in Burma could stop saying something is good if it is not good, or say something is just if it is not just.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#81. When we think of the state of the economy, we are not thinking in terms of money flow. We are thinking in terms of the effect on everyday lives of people.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#82. 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.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#83. I think that freedom is sometimes a state of mind. Sometimes, mind you, but not always.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#84. There is so much that we need to do for our country. I don't think that we can afford to wait.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#85. If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#86. The judiciary in Burma is not independent. It's widely known, everybody knows that.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#87. I don't think I have achieved anything that I can really be proud of.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#89. I saw many aspects of the country which I needed to see in order that I might know what we need to do.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#90. This was the way I was brought up to think of politics, that politics was to do with ethics, it was to do with responsibility, it was to do with service, so I think I was conditioned to think like that, and I'm too old to change now.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#91. Sanctions and boycotts would be tied to serious political dialogue.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#92. The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#93. In terms of the history of a far reaching movement, 20 years is not that long.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#94. The search for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility: it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the true nature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economic difficulties and a lack of resolve in grappling with them.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#95. 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.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#96. The root of a nation's misfortunes has to be sought in the moral failings of the government.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#97. Each man has in him the potential to realize the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others to realize it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#98. One wants to be together with one's family. That's what families are about.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#99. There is no intrinsic virtue to law and order unless "law" is equated with justice and "order" with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done.
Aung San Suu Kyi
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