"We want to empower our people; we want to strengthen them; we want to provide them with the kind of qualifications that will enable them to build up their own country themselves"
About this Quote
The key word is “qualifications.” That’s a technocratic choice, almost deliberately unromantic. Instead of rallying people around vengeance or purity, it frames freedom as capacity: education, skills, civic readiness. The subtext is a rebuke to both colonial hangovers and military rule. You can’t “build up” a country if the populace is kept dependent, undertrained, or politically infantilized. Empowerment here isn’t a slogan; it’s infrastructure.
“Build up their own country themselves” is the emotional release valve. It’s an insistence on ownership, aimed at citizens who have long been treated as subjects. It also protects against the charge of elitism: the movement isn’t claiming it will save the nation, but that it will make national self-rescue possible.
Context matters: Suu Kyi’s public voice emerged in a landscape where democratic aspiration competed with authoritarian control and international scrutiny. This line is crafted to resonate domestically (dignity, self-determination) while signaling to the outside world a nation-building agenda grounded in human development, not upheaval for its own sake.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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| Source | Help us find the source |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kyi, Daw Aung San Suu. (2026, January 17). We want to empower our people; we want to strengthen them; we want to provide them with the kind of qualifications that will enable them to build up their own country themselves. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-want-to-empower-our-people-we-want-to-52164/
Chicago Style
Kyi, Daw Aung San Suu. "We want to empower our people; we want to strengthen them; we want to provide them with the kind of qualifications that will enable them to build up their own country themselves." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-want-to-empower-our-people-we-want-to-52164/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We want to empower our people; we want to strengthen them; we want to provide them with the kind of qualifications that will enable them to build up their own country themselves." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-want-to-empower-our-people-we-want-to-52164/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.





