You may not think about politics, but politics think about you.

So, I think that for the authorities to say now that calling for sanctions will prevent dialogue is a ploy to stop us from supporting sanctions. It has to be the other way around: dialogue first, then we stop our call for sanctions, because sanctions make people understand that you cannot exercise repression and at the same time expect international support.

It is the love of ordinary people, in Burma, in Japan or anywhere else in the world, for justice and peace and freedom that is our surest defense against the forces of unreason and extremism.

I look upon myself as a politician. That isn't a dirty word.

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.

It is not enough to sit and hope. You have to work in order to realize your hopes.

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.