People ask me about what sacrifices I've made. I always answer: I've made no sacrifices, I've made choices.
Aung San Suu KyiRead
My top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes individual empowerment and the ability to effect personal or societal change.
Aung San Suu Kyi encourages individuals to recognize their inherent strength and potential to initiate change in their lives and communities. This message underscores the importance of personal agency and responsibility, reminding us that transformative actions often begin from within, and that collective improvement starts with empowered individuals taking initiative.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire students during their graduation.
People ask me about what sacrifices I've made. I always answer: I've made no sacrifices, I've made choices.
The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.
This was the way I was brought up to think of politics, that politics was to do with ethics, it was to do with responsibility, it was to do with service, so I think I was conditioned to think like that, and I'm too old to change now.
If you want to bring an end to long-standing conflict, you have to be prepared to compromise.
Where there is no justice there can be no secure peace.
I felt that it was my duty not to senselessly waste my time. And since I didn't want to waste my time, I tried to accomplish as much as possible.
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back.
Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in.
The liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it's the next step of peace that we need to create.
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
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