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Liu Xiaobo Quotes

Liu Xiaobo was a Chinese writer, literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end communist one-party rule in China. He was incarcerated as a political prisoner in Jinzhou, Liaoning. On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with liver cancer, and subsequently died on 13 July 2017.Liu rose to fame in 1980s Chinese literary circles with his exemplary literary critiques, and eventually became a visiting scholar at several international universities. He returned to China to support the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was imprisoned for the first time from 1989 to 1991, again from 1995 to 1996 and yet again from 1996 to 1999 for his involvement on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power. He served as the President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, from 2003 to 2007. He was also the president of Minzhu Zhongguo magazine starting in the mid-1990s. On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained due to his participation with the Charter 08 manifesto. He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009 on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power". He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009, and sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009.During his fourth prison term, Liu was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."Liu was the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China. He was the third person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison or detention, after Germany's Carl von Ossietzky and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi . He was the second person to have been denied the right to have a representative collect the Nobel Prize for him as well as the second to die in custody, with the first being Ossietzky, who died in Westend hospital in Berlin-Charlottenburg after being detained in a Nazi concentration camp. Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, blamed the Chinese communist regime for his death and said that "Liu Xiaobo had contributed to the fraternity of peoples through his non-violent resistance against the oppressive actions of the Communist regime in China."



Wikipedia  

✵ 28. December 1955 – 13. July 2017
Liu Xiaobo: 18   quotes 1   like

Famous Liu Xiaobo Quotes

“The worship of violence marks a reversion to barbarism for human civilization. This reversion happens most easily inside autocratic political systems, and the extent of the return to caveman impulses in in direct proportion to the barbarity of the autocracy within which it takes place: the more barbaric the dictatorship, the more devoutly the people will worship violence.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“"Ultra-nationalism" stands naked as nothing but a euphemism for the worship of violence in service of autocratic goals - be they the terrorism and holy war of Islamic fundamentalists or the refusal of dictatorial systems to accept political democracy.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“In China's communist era, despite all of the rhetoric about internationalism and "liberation of mankind" during the Mao years, the regime, especially in its claims to legitimacy, has consistently stressed nationalism. Nationalism has taken different forms at different stages - an arrogant, bellicose style under Mao; a pragmatic, defensive style under Deng Xiaoping; and a resurgence of the arrogant, bellicose style under Jiang Zemin - but the underlying passions that shape the policies have always been caught up in a vicious cycle between self-abasement and self-aggrandizement.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“In its actual power today, the Chinese regime is still far behind the U. S., and there is no chance of its becoming a world hegemon any time soon.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century"
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“Elegy to Lin Zhao, Lone Voice of Chinese Freedom”

Liu Xiaobo

2004
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“Power and money reign supreme in our nation today. Universities count for nothing, and scholarship and ideas count for even less. Love, truth, and sacrifice are meaningless concepts, while betrayal and collective amnesia are taken as a matter of course.”

Liu Xiaobo

No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Liu Xiaobo Quotes about people

“If most people cast their lot with the latter, then evil will prey forever upon humankind, as wolves and tigers prey upon lambs.”

Liu Xiaobo

"On Living with Dignity in China"
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems
Context: Admittedly, righteousness is weak unless it is backed by power, but power devoid of righteousness is evil. If most people cast their lot with the latter, then evil will prey forever upon humankind, as wolves and tigers prey upon lambs.

“In a totalitarian state, the purpose of politics is power and power alone. The "nation" and its peoples are mentioned only to give an air of legitimacy to the application of power. The people accept this devalued existence, asking only to live from day to day.”

Liu Xiaobo

"On Living with Dignity in China"
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“When a people like ours, who struggle with feelings of inferiority, have to face the facts of inadequate national strength, or of less than full respect from others, one way we try to feel better is to grab onto any piece of historical material that can make us proud.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“We must note that speaking truth to power has rewards as well as costs. People who dare to speak out about major public events may not receive tangible benefits, but they receive the very considerable rewards of high moral reputation among fellow Chinese as well as in the international community.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Using Truths to Undermine a System Built of Lies"
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Liu Xiaobo Quotes

“I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes.”

Liu Xiaobo

NPR http://www.npr.org/2012/02/16/146988012/liu-xiaobo-no-enemies-no-hatred-only-courage - "Liu Xiaobo: 'No Enemies, No Hatred,' Only Courage" 16 Feb. 2012
Context: I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes. Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.

Hope

“Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.”

Liu Xiaobo

Charter 08
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems
Context: Freedom. Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.

Freedom

“The nostalgia for Mao Zedong that we see in China today is in part a longing of the poor and downtrodden - the losers in the economic boom - for the egalitarianism an job security of the Mao era. But it is more than that. For the "patriots" in today's rabid nationalism, it is nostalgia for a time when China dared to say "no" to both of the world's superpowers, the Us. S. and the Soviet Union.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

World , Nostalgia , Time , Parting

“Other than pleasure-seeking and consumerism, it seems that the only fruit of our social development is a cancerous overgrowth of "the rational economic man": maximize personal gain, and that's all.”

Liu Xiaobo

The Spiritual Landscape of the Urban Young in Post-Totalitarian China" (2004)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Pleasure , Personality

“In the conflict between survival of the flesh and dignity of the spirit, if we cower to preserve ourselves, we become mere zombies, despite our trappings of prosperity. If we stand up for our dignity, we live nobly, no matter how much we may risk or suffer.”

Liu Xiaobo

"On Living with Dignity in China"
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Suffering

“China's post-totalitarian era has two distinguishing characteristics. First, the rulers still want desperately to hold on to their dictatorial system in the midst of a crisis of legitimacy. Second, society no longer approves of such a system of dictatorship. A spontaneously growing civil society is gradually coming into being, and, although it does not yet have the strength to change the existing system, the increasing pluralism of its economy and its values, like water dripping on stone, is gradually eroding our rigid political monism.”

Liu Xiaobo

The Spiritual Landscape of the Urban Young in Post-Totalitarian China" (2004)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Water , Change

“My view as a Chinese is that Obama's elevation to the position of 44th president of the United States underscores teh greatness of the American system.”

Liu Xiaobo

"Obama's Election, The Republican Factor, and a Proposal for China" (2008)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“Resting beneath the mighty Communist regime is a civil society that remains weak. It doesn't have much courage and is not very sophisticated. As a civil society it is still in a nascent stage, and this is why we mus not expect it, in the near term, to produce a political organization that might replace the Communist regime.”

Liu Xiaobo

"To Change a Regime by Changing a Society" (2009)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Courage

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