Five questions you should ask any powerful person:
1) What power have you got?
2) Where did you get it from?
3) In whose interests do you use it?
4) To whom are you accountable?
5) How do we get rid of you?
- Tony Benn

“When rulers take grain so that they may feast, their people become hungry.
When rulers take action to serve their own interests, their people become rebellious.
When rulers take lives so that their own lives are maintained, their people no longer fear death.
When people act without regard for their own lives, they overcome those who value only their own lives.”
- Lao Zi

“The highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others”
- Socrates

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
- Charles Darwin

“Thailand has a bonsai democracy. Whenever it grows up, someone cuts it back.”
- Jaran Ditapichai

“Politics will only become stable when the political system reflects and accommodates all the important social forces and political aspirations in the society. Competitive strategies of exclusion will only add to social division and political tension. Democracy succeeds in societies where enough of the major social forces come to realize that elections, parliaments, and public debate (for all their messy faults) are better ways to resolve the conflicts in society than power, repression, exclusion, and violence.”
- Pasuk Phongpaichit

“Onesided information, disinformation, misinformation and non information, all equally create an uninformed citizenry which makes democracy a farce. Freedom of speech and expression includes right to impart and receive information which includes freedom to hold opinions.”
- The Indian Supreme Court, observed in Union of India v. Assn. for Democratic Reforms

“If the red shirts ever held a rally, without a phone-in, in order to call for an impartial, independent and comprehensive investigation into the war on drugs with a view to criminal prosecutions of all persons found to be involved in extrajudicial killings, no matter who they might be, many neutrals would be far more inclined to believe their claims to be a democratic movement.”
- Harrison George

“Before, under Thaksin, my paradigm was about clean politics. But after the coup we realized politics is not as simple as that.”
- Supinya Klangnarong

“ท่านอาจได้ยินวาทะของบางคนว่าระบอบประชาธิปไตยในอนาคตของประเทศไทยนั้นจะต้องเป็น ประชาธิปไตยอย่างไทยๆ วาทะนี้ฟังดูแล้วน่าเลื่อมใส ถ้าผู้กล่าวปรารถนาอย่างจริงใจให้ระบอบการเมืองของไทยเหมาะสมแก่สภาพท้องที่กาลสมัยของมวลราษฎรไทย แต่ก็ควรพิจารณาว่าคำที่ว่าอย่างไทยๆนั้น ขออย่าให้เหมาะสมเพียงแต่เฉพาะคนไทยส่วนน้อยของสังคมเท่านั้น”
- ปรีดี พนมยงค์

“ประชาชนไทยเปลี่ยนไปแล้ว มีแต่ชนชั้นนำที่ไม่รู้ตัว หรือเฝ้าหลอกตัวเองว่า ทุกอย่างยังเหมือนเดิม และจะต้องเหมือนเดิมตลอดไป”
- คำ ผกา