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.

You have a great many things to do when you are under house arrest. On the one hand, it is more comfortable than sitting in prison; on the other hand, you have to look after a household, which is strenuous under such circumstances.

Lasting solutions are always difficult to come to. But they will have to persevere. I've been repeating ad nauseam that we in Burma we are weak with regard to the culture of negotiated compromises, that we have to develop the ability to achieve such compromises.

I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons.

I don't seem to have time to breathe. Everything's happening so quickly, and so much is happening all the time.

There can be no civil peace without the rule of law.

Maybe it is something to do with age, but I have become fonder of poetry than of prose.