“It’s like the mountains, the ocean and the rivers. It has its own geological forms. Societies cannot be flat. But during change, human rights, human dignity and free speech have to be protected. Otherwise, we’ll be going backward.”

It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that. There are crises and emergencies all the time, we might not even be aware of some. But I am afraid we’ll have to wait and observe precisely what the government is up to.

It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that.

How to become a really modern society when today we are so – as a human being, we feel so powerful. We have high technology and a superb way of controlling our life. And at the same time, in many ways we are so primitive.

You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it’s necessary or that it’s not even worth to do it.

The jobs for 7 million university graduates every year, the immense corruption: Even some Western governments would have to scramble to find solutions to such problems.

Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?

No state or society can claim to have established human rights once and for all.

There’s no such thing as “fixed” culture. China is also becoming more global. Its problems are becoming international problems, becoming German problems, becoming American problems.

It also makes humanity much more safe. If we see pureness somewhere as something to be desired, the trouble starts.

I never think any place is better than others.

Society becomes very destructive.

Creativity is the power to act.

We are not on – even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.

It’s not really an ideology, but a method of control. But China’s problems are not just China’s problems – they’re human problems. Humanity has always worked better when you see it as one.

Selling high or low doesn’t mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.

Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.

When you’ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.

They are walking on their pants with their cap on backward, listening to the Enema Man and Snoopy, Snoopy Poop Dog.

I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I’m a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I’ve lived my life backwards.