If you're feeling helpless, help someone. ”― Aung San Suu Kyi (from Freedom from Fear)

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.

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.

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.

Government leaders are amazing. So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.

To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.

It is not power that corrupts but fear.

In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued."(From a speech read on video on August 31, 1995 before the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, China)

There is a special charm to journeys undertaken before daybreak in hot lands: the air is soft and cool and the coming of dawn reveals a landscape fresh from the night dew.

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.

If ideas and beliefs are to be denied validity outside the geographical and cultural bounds of their origin, Buddhism would be confined to north India, Christianity to a narrow tract in the Middle East and Islam to Arabia.

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.

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

It is not power that corrupts but fear. The fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.