“I have often thought that i am the most clever woman that ever lived, and others cannot compare with me…. Although I have heard much about Queen Victoria…I don't think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine…. she had… really nothing to say about the policy of the country. Now look at me. I have 400,000,000 people dependent on my judgement.”

As attributed in The last empress: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the birth of modern China, Hannah Pakula, 2009, Simon and Schuster, 391, 1439148937, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=4ZpVntUTZfkC&pg=PA39,
This is redacted from the account of Princess Der Ling, Two Years in the Forbidden City (1911), p. 356 http://books.google.com/books?id=KdUMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA356

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Empress Dowager Cixi 6
Chinese empress 1835–1908

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