One person alone can't do anything as important as bringing genuine democracy to a country.

A revolution simply means great change, significant change, and that's how I'm defining it - great change for the better, brought about through non-violent means.

It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute.

It is part of the unceasing human endeavor to prove that the spirit of man can transcend the flaws of his own nature.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves – they can't depend on a particular person, ie me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.

Unless there is free and fair competition, there can't be healthy economic development. And what we have in Burma now is not an open-market economy that allows free and fair competition, but a form of colonialism makes a few people very, very wealthy. It's what you would crony capitalism.

As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home -first for six years, then for 19 months. 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.