“Courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as ‘grace under pressure’ – grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.”

There is nothing to be gained by being unnecessarily nasty. Violence begets violence.

Jobless people will have no self-confidence. And they feel they are worthless because when you don’t have a job you have to rely on someone.

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.

A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It’s a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.

The traditional face of Africa includes an attitude towards man which can only be described as being socialist

I doubt whether I ever read any description of scenery which gave me an idea of the place described.

You’re trying to take something that can be described in many, many sentences and pages of prose, but you can convert it into a couple lines of poetry and you still get the essence, so it’s that compression. The best code is poetry.

But once you describe something, you destroy it.

Science is not a body of knowledge or a belief system, it is just a term that describes humankind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation.

I do not believe that I’m sacrificing, in fact I feel very uneasy when others used the word sacrifice to describe my life. It sounds like I’m demanding returns for my investments.

It is just a term which describes humankind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome.