A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself.

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.

Humankind is able to create new conditions, a new reality. We are not fated to swim forever among the realities that are here now. ... Everything that is worthwhile in human civilization has not only originated from but has been inspired by dreams, by imagination.

Such was the love of this grandson for his grandmother that two years after the death of his mother, when she herself fell gravely ill, he vowed to her that someday he would try to tell the world her life story. 'But why?' she asked humbly. 'I'm no one, just a girl from the coast' 'But you are everyone, Grandma,' the young Pramoedya told her. 'You are all the people who have ever had to fight to make this life their own.

Do not underestimate the human being, who sometimes appears so simple. Even with sight as sharp as an eagle, a mind as sharp as a razor, senses more powerful than gods, hearing that can catch the music and the lamentations of life, your knowledge of humanity will never be total.

Every good teaching may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.

I did not succeed in everything I did. And even where it did seem I was succeeding it was not always the case. The human heart has a million facets.