“Part of our struggle is to make the international community understand that we are a poor country not because there is an insufficiency of resources and investment, but because we are deprived of the basic institutions and practices that make for good government.”

We have to choose between dialogue and utter devastation.

How could I stand the separation from family and friends? It is ironic, I say, that in an authoritarian state it is only the prisoner of conscience who is genuinely free. Yes, we have given up our right to a normal life. But we have stayed true to that most precious part of our humanity-our conscience.

People ask me about what sacrifices I’ve made. I always answer: I’ve made no sacrifices, I’ve made choices.

Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people.

When you decide to follow a certain path, you should follow it to the end and not be diverted from it for personal reasons.

It’s good to know that the people of different countries are really concerned and involved in the movement to help Burma.

That just laws which uphold human rights are the necessary foundation of peace and security would be denied only by closed minds which interpret peace as the silence of all opposition and security as the assurance of their own power.

Justice is a dream. But it is a dream that we are determined to realize.

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.

The greatest gift for an individual or a nation… was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.

I don’t think of myself as unbreakable. Perhaps I’m just rather flexible and adaptable.

To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others.

If you look at the democratic process as a game of chess, there have to be many, many moves before you get to checkmate. And simply because you do not make any checkmate in three moves does not mean it’s stalemate.

I always say that one has no right to hope without endeavor.

Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world…

Fearlessness may be a gift, but perhaps most precious is courage from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions.

When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).

When it comes to educating all of us about the most basic things in life, it seems to me we need more kindergartens and fewer graduate schools.

I’m blessed with a good pair of ears. That’s how I fooled my piano teacher. I’d watch his fingers and I’d listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.

I just have more fun when I get to try new things – and the action film genre has kind of painted itself into a corner, copied itself so many times and it has basically run out of bad buys.

At the time me and X met, we weren’t homeless, but we were basically homeless.

There were basically three themes. One was the sun theme which is the guitar when he’d get sun on his leg and it comes again in the end. And there’s of course the lullaby which Dido sang, “If I Rise.” And then there’s this driving guitar which is the motivation theme.

Filling a need is not merely good business; it’s a basic attitude towards life. If you see a need, do whatever you can to meet that need.