When history is erased, peoples moral values are also erased. – Ma Jian
My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regimes strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them. – Ma Jian
To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons. – Ma Jian
Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, users manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest – and yet it is all these things. – Jonathan Safran Foer