Aung San

Aung San (13 February 1915 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese revolutionary, soldier, and statesman who is widely considered to be responsible for Burmese independence, even though he was assassinated six months before it was achieved. He is the father of Burmese pro-democracy figure Aung San Suu Kyi.

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 * Let us therefore join hands, Britons, Burmans and all nations alike, to build up an abiding fruitful peace over the foundations of the hard-won victory that all of us desiring progressive direction in our own affairs and in the world at large, have at long last snatched firmly and completely from the grabbing hands of Fascist barbarians, a peace, as I have said, not of the graveyard, but creative of freedom, progress and prosperity in the world.
 * Address delivered at the meeting of East and West Association held on August 29, 1945, at the City Hall of Rangoon


 * It would be consistent and proper for us to join the war for democratic freedom, only if we would likewise be assured that democratic freedom in theory as well as in practice.
 * Address delivered at the meeting of East and West Association held on August 29, 1945, at the City Hall of Rangoon


 * I am well aware that there is such a great craving in man for heroism and the heroic, and that hero worship forms not a small motif in his complex. I am also aware that, unless man believes in his own heroism and the heroism of others, he cannot achieve much or great things. We must, however, take proper care that we do not make a fetish of this cult of hero-worship, for then we will turn ourselves into votaries of false gods and prophets.
 * Presidential address to the first Congress of the AFPFL (20 January, 1946)


 * We cannot bank our hopes on possibilities. We must put our trust in ourselves, in our capabilities and efforts and strength and preparations not only for our success but even to avoid our own defeat.
 * Presidential address to the AFPFL Supreme Council Session (August 1946)


 * In so far as nationalism inculcates in us a sense of national and social justice which call upon us to fight any system that is oppressive or tyrannical both in our country and the world, there I am completely with nationalism. I hate Imperialism whether British or Japanese or Burmese.
 * Address to a meeting of the Anglo-Burman Council at the City Hall, Rangoon (8 December, 1946)

Quotes about Aung San

 * More than the somewhat ambivalent Hitler, Tôjô seemed sincere in his declarations of support for India's 'desperate struggle for independence'. 'Without the liberation of India,' he told the Japanese Diet in early 1942, 'there can be no real mutual prosperity in Greater East Asia.' Ba Maw and Aung San's Burma Independence Army also enjoyed Japanese backing, though at the price of being reduced in size and renamed the Burma Defence Army until the Japanese had made up their minds to grant Burmese independence. In Java and Bali volunteer armies known as Peta (Army Defenders of the Homeland) were also formed. In Malaya, Sumatra, Indo-China and Borneo there were volunteer defence forces too, known as Giyugun.
 * Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 500-501