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
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.
Interpretation
Politics should be rooted in ethics and responsibility.
In this quote, Aung San Suu Kyi reflects on her upbringing and how it shaped her understanding of politics as a moral endeavor centered around ethics, responsibility, and service to others. She acknowledges that her perspective is firmly ingrained and that she is beyond the point of changing this fundamental belief, highlighting the deep connection between her personal values and her political ideology.
In practice
During a political debate, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of ethics in governance.
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.
My top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves.
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.
And now we're suffering the logical culmination of all this: the largest group of government-hati ng, racist, homophobic, misogynistic know-nothing, climate-change denying, evolution-denyi ng, science-denying , anti-immigrant House Republicans in history, bent on taking America back to the 19th century.
The White House is a bully pulpit.
Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.
Nothing can be more evident, than that an exclusive power of regulating elections for the National Government, in the hands of the State Legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy . . . . It is to little purpose to say that a neglect or omission of this kind [not letting the feds have elections], would be unlikely to take place. The constitutional possibility of the thing, without an equivalent for the risk, is an unanswerable objection.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.