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"China is more prosperous than before. The people have better lives but they are not happy and confident because the scars are still there."
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"The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone."
"It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other."
"There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness."
"Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new."
"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."
"We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones."
"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them."
Explore more quotes by Jung Chang
"In certain areas where the media are still controlled, the changes have come to a halt, which is a very frustrating situation. I would like the changes to take place throughout China."
"If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else."
"It's taken us 10 years, and it was constant excitement. I was constantly shocked by how evil he could be. Mao was very, very shrewd but he didn't have human feeling."
"I no longer have the terrible nightmares that I used to have. Mao had just died in 1976, and China began to open up. For the first time scholarships to go to the West to study were awarded on academic merit."
"I like to have Chinese furniture in my home as a constant and painful reminder of how much has been destroyed in China. The contrast between the beauty of the past and the ugliness of the modern is nowhere sharper than in China."
"For anyone to open their heart, they need the right atmosphere, and something to prompt them. For my mother it was her trip abroad: she was in a very relaxed, understanding environment. I was very sympathetic towards her."
"What has marked Chinese society is its level of cruelty, not just revolutions and wars. We ought to reject it totally, otherwise in another upheaval there will be further cruelty."
"I was not allowed to take notes but my friend and I memorised those two and a half pages. Most people talked to me because of the warning. They knew this book was not going to be the official line."
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