Quotes & Sayings About Burma

My mother used to say that rain here pours like a blessing, like a thick veil that parts to reveal the bride's face. But nearly every day, when this rain parted, it revealed a long line of soldiers, like you, like death, marching toward us, and we would scatter with a practiced silence and hide. — Mia Kirshner

My top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Early railway journeys took him to Ceylon, Thailand, and Burma; he would later describe his wanderlust as the "peripatetics of a Jewish prince". — VO Blum

My family was in Singapore when the Japanese War started. We were in Singapore at the time of Pearl Harbor, and by the beginning of 1942, the Japanese invasion of Burma and Singapore had started. — Tom Stoppard

Unless there is free and fair competition, there can't be healthy economic development. And what we have in Burma now is not an open-market economy that allows free and fair competition, but a form of colonialism makes a few people very, very wealthy. It's what you would crony capitalism. — Aung San Suu Kyi

An earthquake is such fun when it is over. — George Orwell

I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood are conditions people have to work at. It's a serious matter. You compromise, you give, you take, you stand firm, and you're relentless ... And it is an investment. Sisterhood means if you happen to be in Burma and I happen to be in San Diego and I'm married to someone who is very jealous and you're married to somebody who is very possessive, if you call me in the middle of the night, I have to come. — Maya Angelou

It's good to know that the people of different countries are really concerned and involved in the movement to help Burma. I think in some ways it's better to have the people of the world on your side than the governments of the world, even if governments can be more effective in certain directions. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it. — Joseph Stilwell

I love Southeast Asia. As a child, I lived in that part of the world. My first time in Burma was in 1958 with my parents. — Muhtar Kent

The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco - products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn't have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died. — Jerry Della Femina

I urge North Korea's leaders to reflect on Burma's experience. While the work of reform is ongoing, Burma has already broken out of isolation and opened the door to a far better future for its people. — Thomas E. Donilon

Paterson was not a member of the club. [..] When Paterson wanted to swim he took a towel and swam in the river naked and his Burmese boy stood on the bank with his bath-robe and waited to rub him down. 'I like to swim in water, not people,' was a remark of Paterson's that for a long time went round the club. — H.E. Bates

This week I've travelled more than 15,000 miles from America to China to Burma to Australia. I have no idea what time it is right now. — Barack Obama

Well, we have to do something. There are all sorts of rumours about soldiers coming up."
"These people are full of rumours. They love rumours." Paterson stood watching the bridge. "Their whole life is a rumour. — H.E. Bates

My father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million slave labourers in 1943. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died. — Richard Flanagan

As for the sanctimony of people who seem blind to the fact that mass murder is still an annual event, look at Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet, Burma and elsewhere-the truer shout is not "Never again" but "Again and again. — Paul Theroux

Without ever leaving her hide-out in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O'Connor knew all there was to know about the two-lane, dirt and blacktop Southern roads of the 1950s - with their junkyards and tourist courts, gravel pits and pine trees that pressed at the edges of the road. She knew the slogans of the Burma Shave signs, knew the names of barbecue joints and the chicken baskets on their menus. She also knew a backwoods American cadence and vocabulary you'd think was limited to cops, truckers, runaway teens, and patrons of the Teardrop Inn where at midnight somebody could always be counted on to go out to a pickup truck and come back with a shotgun. She was a virtuoso mimic, and she assimilated whole populations of American sounds and voices, and then offered them back to us from time to time in her small fictional detonations, one of which she named, in 1953, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find. — William Caverlee

With the right kind of institutions, starting with the rule of law, Burma could progress very quickly. — Aung San Suu Kyi

What does Burma have to give the United States? We can give you the opportunity to engage with people who are ready and willing to change a society. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Beauty could not love you back. People were not what they seemed and certainly not what they said. Madness was contagious. Memory served melancholy. The medieval was not so bad. Gravity was a form of nostalgia. There could be virtue in satirizing virtue. Dwight Eisenhower and Werner von Braun had the exact same mouths. No one loved a loser until he completely lost. The capital of Burma was Rangoon. — Lorrie Moore

I can say with absolute confidence that the general public of Burma would be very little affected, if at all, by sanctions. So far, the kind of investments that have come in have benefited the public very little indeed. If you have been in Burma long enough, you will be aware of the fact that a small elite has developed that is extremely wealthy. Perhaps they would be affected, but my concern is not with them but with the general public. — Aung San Suu Kyi

My mother was born in Burma, but my grandfather on her side was Indian-Spanish. So I have this quite exotic mix, which is reflected in my earliest memories, in our Wiltshire country kitchen, of gran, and aunts, cooking spicy stewy, casseroley curries, a version of Indian food with a Burmese twist. — Jamie Cullum

The best way to help Burma is to empower the people of Burma, to help us have enough self-confidence to obtain what we want for ourselves. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Bursts of gold on lavender melting into saffron. It's the time of day when the sky looks like it has been spray-painted by a graffiti artist. — Mia Kirshner

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. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Contrary to the general picture of the decline of Asia and the rise of the West, the Chinese economy was buoyant in the eighteenth century, developing its own local variations and with trade links across Southeast Asia. Silk, porcelain and tea from China continued to be in great demand in Europe (and in the American colonies) even though in 1760 the Chinese confined all Western traders to the port city of Canton. Tribute-paying neighbours as near as Burma, Nepal and Vietnam (and as far away as Java) upheld Beijing's solipsistic view that the Chinese emperor, presiding over the central kingdom of the world, had the right to rule 'all under heaven. — Pankaj Mishra

It became such a recurring experience during this period when I was twenty
to be starving and afraid of running out of money
as I wandered from Brussels to Burma and everywhere in between for months on end, that I later came to see it as a part of my training as a cook. I came to see hunger as being as important a part of a stage as knife skills. Because so much starving on that trip led to such an enormous amount of time fantasizing about food, each craving became fanatically particular. Hunger was not general, ever, for just something, anything, to eat. My hunger grew so specific I could name every corner and fold of it. Salty, warm, brothy, starchy, fatty, sweet, clean and crunchy, crisp and water, and so on. — Gabrielle Hamilton

[A]ll that mystical jabber about expecting the unexpected is just so much toffee. Expect the unexpected, Edie was told by a sour veteran sergeant in Burma, and the expected will walk up to you and blow your expectations out through the back of your head. Expect the expected, just don't forget the rest. — Nick Harkaway

The judiciary in Burma is not independent. It's widely known, everybody knows that. — Aung San Suu Kyi

A big war is coming. Bigger than the one they were starting when I left. It'll go hard on England, but I expect we'll survive. I missed the other war, she said. I mean to be present for this one. Samuel and I had never really thought about war. Why, she said, the signs are all over Africa. India too, I expect. First there's a road built to where you keep your goods. Then your trees are hauled off to make ships and captain's furniture. Then your land is planted with something you can't eat. Then you're forced to work it. That's happening all over Africa, she said. Burma too, I expect. — Alice Walker

If you can't change it don't worry about it. — David Barrett

After a year or two, the long term expats won't see the beggars the same way. After a year or two, the cheeky young monks won't make them smile. After a year or two, the newest restaurant opening won't pull them in. To preserve they will withdraw and settle. They will come to accept the limits of it all. The hype won't bother them. The promise won't motivate them. They will have accepted their odd expat life, their awkward place in the chimera that is Myanmar today. — Craig Hodges

It could achieve a lot if everyone in Burma could stop saying something is good if it is not good, or say something is just if it is not just. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Burma evoked the lost Kenyan soldiers who served in the war. You never hear about them. There were a significant number of casualties, men who never came back home. But they're never commemorated. — Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Central Intelligence cutting Meo opium fields! China Lobby copping poppies in Burma! How long this Addict government support our oil-burner matter-habit — Allen Ginsberg

I'm not the only one working for democracy in Burma - there are so many people who have worked for it because they believe that this is the only way we can maintain the dignity of our people. — Aung San Suu Kyi

But you'll notice, you will notice that Russia and China, invariably at the United Nations, move to block American action, to repress or hem in or punish other kinds of outlaw. Who stands behind Mugabi at the United Nations? Russia and China do. Who tried successfully to prevent the United Nations from speaking with one voice on its most signal violation of its resolutions, Iraq? Russia and China, again. North Korea the same. Burma the same. — Christopher Hitchens

It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form's sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow.
The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense — George MacDonald Fraser

Simple. Judaism had its day, and if the Jews had been smart, when Christianity came along they'd have joined up. Christianity has had its day, and if you were intelligent you'd both join the newest religion. Islam!" He bowed low and said, "Soon all Africa will be Islamic. And all Black America. I see India giving up Hinduism while Burma and Thailand surrender Buddhism. Gentlemen, I represent the religion of the future. I offer you salvation. — James A. Michener

The reusi of Thailand are similar to the vijjadharas (weizza) of Burma, the eysey of Cambodia, the yogis of Tibet, the siddhas of India, the immortals of China, the sufis of Islam, the hermits of Europe, the mystics of Christianity, and the shamans of the Americas and Africa. These groups represent the mystical (not the dogmatic or orthodox) traditions within their respective religions. — Bob Haddad

I turned into a monk when my mother went to learn Buddhism in Burma. While she learnt at the monastery, I used to roam around with a begging bowl and ask for food. — Kabir Bedi

That cyclone in Burma? That was just me doing the dance to that annoying ass song ... — Zach Braff

88. People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I've been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it's the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris. — Roman Payne

Seeds of destruction take root in the human heart, and even among those who long for peace, they call to our darker instincts and urge us to violence.: — Victoria Armour-Hileman

By turns sad and uplifting, Life in the Valley of Death tells the amazing tale of Alan Rabinowitz's courageous and spirited efforts to protect Burma's (Myanmar's) remaining tigers and establish the Hukawng Valley Reserve. It is hard to imagine a more passionate or exciting account of today's conservation challenges, or a more thoughtful rendering of life, death, and politics in Burma's most remote corners. — Thant Myint-U

The problem in Burma is the problem in Egypt, the problem you refer to in Yemen, and the problem in a lot of these countries in the world: that you can get stuck in the process of transition, in what's been called a competitive authoritarian ... a pseudo democratic regime. — Larry Diamond

I think when the people in Burma stop thinking about whether or not they're free, it'll mean that they're free. — Aung San Suu Kyi

He showed me how ... See, he says he's going up through Laos, then into Burma, and then some other country, I forget, and then India and Iran and Turkey, and then Greece, and the rest is easy. That's what he said. The rest is easy, he said. — Tim O'Brien

In the 'Nike Economy,' there are no standards, no borders and no rules. Clearly, the global economy isn't working for workers in China and Indonesia and Burma any more than it is for workers here in the United States. — John Sweeney

But if the world measures a refugee according to the worst story, we will always excuse human suffering, saying it is not yet as bad as someone else's. — Victoria Armour-Hileman

We spent time on Burma and the need for the military regime there to understand that they shouldn't fear the voices of people. And yet they do. — George W. Bush

Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference. — Graham Coxon

The founders of modern Burma believed that they could guarantee prosperity and happiness by correctly choosing the moment for the rebirth of our country. They consulted astrologists and fortune-tellers, men of impeccable behaviour and uncontested wisdom, who were devout Buddhists to boot. Acting on the advice of these holy arithmeticians, they declared independence on the fourth of January in the year 1948, at twenty past four in the morning. Every year since then, we have commemorated that happy occasion on that day at that same impossible hour - in the full awareness that independence has caused more misfortune than all of the oppression and exploitation of the entire colonial period put together. — Karel Glastra Van Loon

I still oppose "Visit Myanmar Year," and I would ask tourists to stay away. Burma is not going to run away. They should come back to Burma at a time when it is a democratic society where people are secure - where there is justice, where there is rule of law. They'll have a much better time. And they can travel around Burma with a clear conscience. — Aung San Suu Kyi

We have been making constant efforts, all the time, to start dialogue with the SLORC, but you know it takes two. We don't want a monologue. We would like a substantive political dialogue among the SLORC, political leaders including myself, and leaders of ethnic groups-exactly as stipulated in the U.N. General Assembly resolution on Burma. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Amitav Ghosh's multigenerational saga The Glass Palace, set in colonial Burma, India, and Malaya, tells the story of Rajkumar, once a poor Indian boy, who becomes a wealthy teak trader in Burma, and lovely Dolly, former child-maid to the queen and second princess of Burma. — Nancy Pearl

For the past 10 years I have had the interesting experience of observing the development of Parkinson's syndrome on myself. As a matter of fact, this condition does not come under my special medical interests or I would have had it solved long ago. ... The condition has its compensations: one is not yanked from interesting work to go to the jungles of Burma ... one avoids all kinds of deadly committee meetings, etc. — Fuller Albright

Eight hundred people, possibly, are murdered every year in Burma, they matter nothing; but the murder of a white man is a monstrosity, a sacrilege. — George Orwell

My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma — Desmond Tutu

Dr. Gordon S. Seagrave, the famous "Burma Surgeon. — Ralph Ellison

There is still a severe and scary amount of extreme poverty in rural parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and sub-Saharan Africa. — Hans Rosling

When I was young and had no sense
In far-off Mandalay
I lost my heart to a Burmese girl
As lovely as the day.
Her skin was gold, her hair was jet,
her teeth were ivory;
I said, "For twenty silver pieces,
Maiden, sleep with me."
She looked at me, so pure, so sad,
The loveliest thing alive,
And in her lisping, virgin voice,
Stood out for twenty-five. — George Orwell

Ah-rah-han, the first Buddhist apostle of Burma, under the patronage of King Anan-ra-tha-men-zan, disseminated the doctrines of atheism and taught his disciples to pant after annihilation as the supreme good. — Adoniram Judson

Remember what your grandfather said about the earth's being round at school and flat at home. He was a wise man and taught you what you need to know in Burma. It is the same in politics. Learn the arguments for socialism in the textbooks parrot them pass your exams. Never never argue. But keep within your own head and heart what you and everyone really knows that in the real world it is a system of incompetence and corruption and a project for ruining the country. — Pascal Khoo Thwe

Be careful about Burma. Most people cannot remember whether it was Siam and has become Thailand, or whether it is now part of Malaysia and should be called Sri Lanka. — Alexander Cockburn

You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me. — John O'Hurley

It is essential to institute a legal framework that would ensure justice and improve the quality of life in Burma immediately, because the greatest suffering among the people at the moment is caused by lack of justice and lack of the rule of law. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I don't want Burma to be a basket case forever. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I gathered as much reading material about Aung San Suu Kyi and about Burma as I could. And I read every article and every book she had written. I also had 200 hours of footage of her to watch. I tried to discover who were her heroes and where he desire and strength to pursue democracy in a non-violent fashion came from. — Michelle Yeoh

We stepped carefully, so softly, over thorny plants. The dust had turned to mud, splattering our shoes, socks, and legs. By the time we reached the boat, our clothes were clinging to our flesh and stained with the bloody remains of mosquitoes. — Mia Kirshner

I've been repeating ad nauseam that we in Burma, we are weak with regard to the culture of negotiated compromises, that we have to develop the ability to achieve such compromises. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I will not leave Burma until the cross is planted here forever. — Adoniram Judson

Those of us who decided to work for democracy in Burma made our choice in the conviction that the danger of standing up for basic human rights in a repressive society was preferable to the safety of a quiescent life in servitude — Aung San

The best way to deal with AIDS is through education. So we need a really widespread AIDS education program. In fact, what we need in Burma is education of all kinds - political, economic, and medical. AIDS education would be just part of a whole program for education, which is so badly needed in our country. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I've always said that the more coordinated the efforts of the international community are, the better it will be for democracy in Burma. — Aung San Suu Kyi

There are no Rohingya among the races [in Burma]. We only have Bengalis who were brought for farming [during British rule]. — Thein Sein

Seriously, just have the gonads to quote yourself! ^^ — T.F. Rhoden

Give me fifty DC-3's and the Japanese can have the Burma Road. — Chiang Kai-shek

Like the crocodile, he strikes always at the weakest spot. — George Orwell

I think corporations should give more attention to this suffering and should wait to invest until there is a responsible government in Burma. I do not think it is a good idea to separate economics from politics; in fact, I do not think economics can be separated from politics It's quite understandable that many business concerns think only about their own profits It's up to the public to put as much pressure as it can on these companies, through shareholder resolutions and public actions. — Aung San Suu Kyi

As long as there is no law in Burma, any individual here can be arrested at any time. — Aung San Suu Kyi

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 ... — Aung San Suu Kyi

This is Burma and it is unlike any land you know about. — Rudyard Kipling

Argentina and Burma. I have been to most of the countries in the world, but not those two. I want to shoot doves in Argentina. Burma, of course, because no one has really been there. — Jeremy Clarkson

Millard! Who's the prime minister?"
"Winston Churchill," he said. "Have you gone daft?"
"What's the capital of Burma?"
"Lord, I've no idea. Rangoon?"
"Good! When's your birthday?"
"Will you quit shouting and let me bleed in peace! — Ransom Riggs