My dear, with your love I can calmly face my impending trial, having no regrets about the choices I've made and optimistically awaiting tomorrow.
— Liu Xiaobo
From B.A. to M.A. and on to Ph.D., my academic career was all smooth sailing. Upon receiving my degrees, I stayed on to teach at Beijing Normal University.
I do my best to make every word from my pen a cry from the heart for the souls of the dead.
I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.
I have been obsequious toward Western civilization, exaggerating its merits and, at the same time, exaggerating my own merits.
For those of us in the opposition movement under dictatorships, part of our job is confronting police and spending time in prison. So, a dissident not only needs to learn how to oppose oppression but also how to face the crackdowns and time in prison.
Appreciation has become my destiny in life. Perhaps it's the instinct of a polar bear enjoying hibernation in the vast snows.
In China the underworld and officialdom have interpenetrated and become one. Criminal elements have become officialized as officials have become criminalized.
My tendency to idealize Western civilization arises from my nationalistic desire to use the West in order to reform China. But this has led me to overlook the flaws of Western culture.
Hatred is corrosive of a person's wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation's spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and block a nation's progress to freedom and democracy.
In my view, Reform and Opening Up began with the abandonment of the 'using class struggle as guiding principle' government policy of the Mao era and, in its place, a commitment to economic development and social harmony.
It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is.
There is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom, and China will, in the end, become a nation ruled by law, where human rights reign supreme.
If you want to enter hell, don't complain of the dark; you can't blame the world for being unfair if you start on the path of the rebel.
Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China's own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization.
Ultimately, change will happen when problems persist and enough people are concerned.
Love as intense as ice, love as remote as blackness.
The Internet is truly God's gift to the Chinese people.
The major wars that the U.S. became involved in are all ethically defensible.
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.
In the course of my life, for more than half a century, June 1989 was the major turning point. Up to that point, I was a member of the first class to enter university when college entrance examinations were reinstated following the Cultural Revolution (Class of '77).
My searing desire to atone for having survived helps me resist the temptations to join the world of lies.
I always think that reforms and turning China into a free country is a long and tortuous process. Despite this, in a totalitarian state, the fight for freedom comes from the accumulative efforts of the people; without such efforts, very little will happen.
In order to exercise the right to freedom of speech conferred by the Constitution, one should fulfill the social responsibility of a Chinese citizen.
China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the U.N. Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights.
If there has been any progress in the Chinese society and politics over the last 20 years, it is all because the citizens have been pushing for change.
My praise is perhaps an unforgivable poison.
I have viewed the West as if it were not only the salvation of China but also the natural and ultimate destination of all humanity.
The free world led by the U.S. fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights.
I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes.
