Hong Kong people do not keep silent and I urge people around the world to keep their eyes on Hong Kong and the passion with which people are fighting for basic rights. We never give up and we will not be silenced.
Joshua WongRead
We do not want to see a Hong Kong that enjoys freedoms on paper but whose autonomous status conceals the workings of a totalitarian state.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of genuine freedoms over mere theoretical autonomy.
Joshua Wong highlights the contradiction between having freedoms that exist only in written form and the reality of being governed by an oppressive regime. He advocates for true autonomy in Hong Kong, warning against a faΓ§ade of freedom that masks totalitarian control, indicating the need for substantive rights and liberties rather than superficial promises.
In practice
During a speech advocating for democracy, one might reference this quote to highlight the risks of superficial freedoms.
Hong Kong people do not keep silent and I urge people around the world to keep their eyes on Hong Kong and the passion with which people are fighting for basic rights. We never give up and we will not be silenced.
We will continue civil disobedience to fight for democracy and for human rights in Hong Kong.
Adversity will only sharpen our wits and make us more strong-willed, resulting in the political awakening of more Hong Kongers, not to mention the international community's support.
From horrific incidents of police brutality and complicity in indiscriminate attacks by triads on citizens to arbitrary mass arrests and the banning of demonstrations, the government has employed nearly every weapon in its war chest to intimidate Hong Kongers into silence and to suppress their popular struggle for democracy and freedom.
I'm not a hero. The Hongkongers who confronted tear gas in the streets are the heroes.
Hong Kong people stand in the front line to confront authoritarian suppression.
The Cold War did end in the victory of one side and in the defeat of the other. This reality cannot be denied, despite the understandable sensitivities that such a conclusion provokes among the tenderhearted in the West and some of the former leaders of the defeated side.
"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.
In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders.
Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.
If a novelist had concocted a villain like Trump - a larger-than-life, over-the-top avatar of narcissism, mendacity, ignorance, prejudice, boorishness, demagoguery, and tyrannical impulses, she or he would likely be accused of extreme contrivance and implausibility.
If elected members of any body - whether it's a state house or Congress - were not willing to take career-ending or at least election-losing votes, I would not have the right to vote today.
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