Burma Quotes

He undertook to overtake
The road was on a bend
From now on the Undertaker
Is his only friend ~ Neil Gaiman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 don't want Burma to be a basket case forever. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

I can take a book in my hands and voyage across the world. China, Burma, Jamaica - the very sound of the words is an enchantment bringing me sights and sounds, and odors that my senses have never savored. ~ D.E. Stevenson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I was a kid growing up, the message "Jesus is the Answer" was ubiquitous - painted on barns, outcroppings of rock, or as the final installment of a Burma Shave sign. The message, however, is distinctly unbiblical. The message should be "Jesus is the Assignment. ~ Robin Meyers

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