Highlights of Suu Kyi’s Nobel Peace Prize Speech
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Burma’s
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi delivers her Nobel acceptance speech
during a ceremony at Oslo's City Hall in June 16, 2012. (Photo:
Reuters)
POWER OF THE PEACE PRIZE
“Often during my days of house arrest it felt as though I were no
longer a part of the real world.” Winning the Nobel Peace Prize “made me
real once again. It had drawn me back into the wider human community.
And what was more important, the Nobel Prize had drawn the attention of
the world to the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma. We
were not going to be forgotten.”
IGNORING OTHERS’ SUFFERING FUELS WAR
“The First World War represented a terrifying waste of youth and
potential, a cruel squandering of the positive forces of our planet. …
And for what? Nearly a century on, we have yet to find a satisfactory
answer. Are we not still guilty, if to a less violent degree, of
recklessness, of improvidence with regard to our future and our
humanity? War is not the only arena where peace is done to death.
Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for
suffering degrades and embitters and enrages.
WE LIVE IN AN ENLIGHTENED AGE
“We are fortunate to be living in an age when social welfare and
humanitarian assistance are recognized not only as desirable but
necessary. I am fortunate to be living in an age when the fate of
prisoners of conscience anywhere has become the concern of peoples
everywhere, an age when democracy and human rights are widely, even if
not universally, accepted as the birthright of all.”
PERFECT PEACE MUST BE OUR GOAL
“Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one
towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a
traveler in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will
lead him to salvation. Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth,
because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavors to gain
peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and
help to make our human community safer and kinder.”
THE PEACEMAKING POWER OF KINDNESS
“Of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that these are not
numerous, I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the
lesson I learnt on the value of kindness. Every kindness I received,
small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our
world. To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to
the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can
lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people.”
IMAGINING A WORLD WITHOUT REFUGEES
“Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the
displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and
every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the
freedom and the capacity to live in peace. Every thought, every word,
and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a
contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable of making
such a contribution. Let us join hands to try to create a peaceful world
where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness.”
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