I've always said that the most important thing is job creation. Jobs will earn people money and build self-confidence.

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

Once serious political dialogue has begun, the international community can assume that we have achieved genuine progress along the road to real democratisation.

I don't want to see the military falling. I want to see the military rising to dignified heights of professionalism and true patriotism.

Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear.

When fear sets in, you don't trust others and when you don't trust anyone then you become selfish.

It's very difficult to have any faith in the sincerity of the SLORC about stamping out drug production if they find it so easy to forgive a drug baron whom at one time they said they would never, never forgive and would never, never regard as anything but a drug runner. The SLORC is far more aggressive in its attitude toward the National League for Democracy than against drug traffickers.