“I only used a cell phone for the first time after I was released. I had difficulty coping with it because it seemed so small and insubstantial.”

It is not power that corrupts but fear.

If you are feeling helpless, help someone.

I’ve always thought that the best solution for those who feel helpless is for them to help others.

Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour.

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.

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.

In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth women are not merely “tolerated”, they are valued.

When I was in London a Kachin youth criticized me for not condemning the Burmese military for their offensive in Kachin State. I answered “condemnation is not the solution.” We want to build reconciliation, not condemnation.

One should mature over 20 years.

The true measure of the justice of a system is the amount of protection it guarantees to the weakest.

Kindness can change the lives of people.

It would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear.

My top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves.

There is nothing to compare with the courage of ordinary people whose names are unknown and whose sacrifices pass unnoticed.

The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.

I think people prefer the good to win, rather than the bad.

When we feed our fourteen billion brain cells with information that will enrich us and help others, we are really learning to Think Big.

The one thing I’m absolutely obsessed with lately are gadgets! New cell phones; I walk around with three phones because I have all the new ones, and I can’t choose which I prefer.

This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of me who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described.

How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.

The fine, hair-like rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top.

One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones.

In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.

When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are…they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded.