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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Russian author and historian, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has written a number of major novels based on his own experience of Soviet prisons, the most famous being The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1978). Descended from an intellectual Cossack family, he was serving in the East Prussian military when he was arrested for criticizing Joseph Stalin in private correspondence with a friend and sentenced to an eight-year term in a labor camp. He was imprisoned from 1945 to 1953, followed by permanent internal exile. Through his writings, he made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system, and, for these efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.  He was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 but returned in 1994 and now lives with his wife, Natalia in Moscow. He has continued to criticize western materialism and Russian bureaucracy and secularization.  Solzhenitsyn is the oldest living Nobel laureate in literature.  

“You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power- he’s free again.”

“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.”

“For a country to have a great writer . . . is like having another government. That’s why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”

“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”

“Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.”

“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  (1918- )

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Muhammad Yunus
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient

A Bangladeshi banker, professor of economics, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus is famous for his successful application of micro credit. Against the advice of banks and government, Yunus began giving out  'micro-loans' to the poor, and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning 'village bank', founded on principles of trust and solidarity. These loans are given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Grameen methods are applied in projects in 58 countries, including the US, Canada, France, The Netherlands and Norway. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was a vocal advocate for awarding the Nobel Prize to Muhammed Yunus. In 2007, Business Week magazine named Dr. Yunus as one of “The Greatest Entrepreneurs of All Time.” “What is entrepreneurship, after all?  Bigness is not the issue.  Poor people are the ones who take challenges every day. The guy who sells a hot dog on the street is as much an entrepreneur as anyone else. Getting his $50 loan to start could be as difficult as finding $50 million for someone else. All people are entrepreneurs.”

“Poverty is unnecessary.”

“I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.”

“This is not charity. This is business: business with a social objective, which is to help people get out of poverty.”

“I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation.”

“Soon we saw that money going to women brought much more benefit to the family than money going to the men. So we changed our policy and gave a high priority to women. As a result, now 96% of our four million borrowers in Grameen Bank are women.”

“Poor people are just as human as anyone else. They have just as much potential as anyone.”

“People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They’re not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives.”

“In the world of development, if one mixes the poor and the non-poor in a program, the non-poor will always drive out the poor, and the less poor will drive out the more poor, unless protective measures are instituted right at the beginning.  In such cases, the non-poor reap the benefits of all that is done in the name of the poor.”

“I’m encouraging young people to become social business entrepreneurs and contribute to the world, rather than just making money. Making money is no fun. Contributing to and changing the world is a lot more fun.”

“Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn’t billions of dollars people needed right away.”

“I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked.”

                       

“My experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith; an unshakable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue.”

“Each individual person is very important. Each person has tremendous potential. She or he alone can influence the lives of others within the communities, nations, within and beyond her or his own time.”

“I have come to believe, deeply and firmly, that we can create a poverty free world if we want to. I came to this conclusion not as a product of a pious dream, but as a concrete result of experience gained in the work of the Grameen Bank.”

“If I could be useful to another human being, even for a day, that would be a great thing. It would be greater than all the big thoughts I could have at the university.”

- Muhammad Yunus  (1940-)

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Larry King

Larry King, an American writer, journalist and host of CNN’s Larry King Live, is celebrating his 50th year in broadcasting in 2007. The Emmy Award-winning host of CNN’s highest-rated program, King has been dubbed “the most remarkable talk-show host on TV ever” by TV Guide, “master interviewer,” by Entertainment Tonight, and “master of the mike” by TIME magazine. King has done more than 40,000 interviews throughout his half century in broadcasting.

“Most industry analysts will tell you that the news media outlets need to be involved in more and more marketplaces. For what’s its worth, my opinion is that they just need to mellow out.”

- Larry King  (1933- )

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Aung San Suu Kyi

An activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Myanmar (Burma), Aung San Suu Kyi is a prisoner of conscience. She was heavily influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence and Buddhist concepts. She earned a Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1985.  In the 1990 general election, Suu Kyi won the votes to be Prime Minister, but her detention by the military junta prevented her from assuming that role. She won the ‘Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought’ in 1990 and in 1991 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

She is still under detention today, as the Myanmar government has repeatedly extending her detention. On May 16, 2007, 59 world leaders released a letter demanding that Myanmar’s military government free Suu Kyi. The signatories include former US presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the former UK prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former President of Poland, Lech Wałęsa, as well as many others. Artists such as U2, Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Damien Rice, and R.E.M. have also publicly supported Aung San Suu Kyi’s cause.

“It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.”

“The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.”

“Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.”

Human beings the world over need freedom and security that they may be able to realize their full potential.”

“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

“We will surely get to our destination if we join hands.”

- Aung San Suu Kyi  (1945- )

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, led India to independence from Britain through nonviolent protest. Using legal skills he employed as a British-educated attorney, a host of finely honed strategic organizational methods, and an extraordinary capacity to move people’s hearts and minds through his writings, speeches, protest marches and example of personal sacrifice – as evidenced by his long protest fasts which brought him to the brink of death – Gandhi prevailed.

In addition to nonviolence, which is know by the word Satyagraha, (resisting tyranny through mass civil disobedience), his living philosophy included self-sufficiency, (he made his own clothes from cotton cloth woven at his ashram), and eating a simple vegetarian diet. He championed the rights of the poor, the need for liberation of women from all forms of bias, the elimination of the caste system and other discriminatory practices based on social class, and the need for all religions and philosophies to drop their hatred of other ways and cooperate together for the betterment of all humanity.

His leadership, (and the humiliation of those in power due to the many years Gandhi was imprisoned in both countries), gained the rights of Indians in South Africa and liberated the whole of greater India, which at that time included Pakistan.  Gandhi was extremely saddened by the split of his country into two, shortly after liberation from Britain, largely due to religious intolerance on the part of many Hindus and Muslims.

Gandhi’s legacy lives on in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Dalai Lama, Cesar Chavez, Lech Wałęsa, Benigno Aquino, Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela.

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

“What do I think of Western civilization?  I think it would be a very good idea.”

“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”

“Strength does not come from physical capacity.  It comes from an indomitable will.”

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you were to live forever.”

- Mohandas Gandhi  (1869 –1948)

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The much-loved monarch of the British Isles (and 16 independent states and their overseas territories), Elizabeth II became Queen of England in 1952 when her father, George VI, died.

Elizabeth was thirteen years old when World War II broke out, and she and her younger sister, Princess Margaret were evacuated to Windsor Castle. There was some suggestion that the two princesses be evacuated to Canada. To this proposal their mother made the famous reply: “The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave.”  The Queen has carried on this stoic and some would say selfless love of country and duty her entire reign.

Recent polls showed that most British citizens wish for the Queen to remain on the throne until her death – as the Queen herself has become an institution.

Her main leisure interests include horseracing and dogs, especially her Pembroke Welsh Corgis.

British actress Helen Mirren, who won an Academy Award in 2007 for portraying the Elizabeth II in the acclaimed film, “The Queen”, has said, “Elizabeth Windsor at the age of 25 walked into literally the role of a lifetime. I honestly feel this award belongs to her, because I think you fell in love with her, not with me. I think she’s a person who is genuine, she refuses to be fake.”

“The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.”

“We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.”

“I have to be seen to be believed.”

“I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else - I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”

Speaking to rock legend Eric Clapton about his guitar playing at a Buckingham Palace reception for the British music industry in March of 2005 she inquired:

“Have you been playing a long time?”
 
And then to Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, who wrote the famous song ‘Stairway to heaven’, she asked:

“Are you a guitarist too?”  

- Elizabeth II  (1926- )

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Albert Camus

The Algerian born French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus, was the second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first being Rudyard Kipling. Camus is often associated with existentialism although he rejected the term, preferring to be known only as an author and a thinker. His life was made challenging by recurring tuberculosis, two marriages marred with infidelity, intermittent employment as a journalist and was ended prematurely by an auto accident. He was active within the French Resistance to the German occupation of France during World War II. For the 1st quote, he wrote on the French collaboration with Nazi occupiers:

“Now the only moral value is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the name of the people.”

                                         

“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”

                                          

“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”

- Albert Camus  (1913-1960)

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