69 Quotes by Jung Chang

  • Author Jung Chang
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    Unlike most founding dictators – Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler – Mao did not inspire a passionate following through his oratory, or ideological appeal. He simply sought willing recruits among his immediate circle, people who would take his orders.

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    It was not so much a feeling of being insulted, but an overwhelming pain for the people of my native land. We were not treated by our own government as proper human beings, and consequently some outsiders did not regard us as the same kind of humans as themselves. I thought of the old observation that Chinese lives were cheap, and one Englishman’s amazement that his Chinese servant should find a toothache unbearable.

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    Every word of Chairman Mao’s is universal absolute truth, and every word equals ten thousand words!

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    We in China had been trained not to draw conclusions from facts, but to start with Marxist theories or Mao thoughts or the Party line and to deny, even condemn, the facts that did not suit them. I.

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    Traditional Chinese administration was a well-oiled machine, which, barring a crisis, would keep ticking over. Initiatives were not required and rarely offered. State policies depended almost entirely on the dynamism of the throne.

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    When boys played “guerrilla warfare,” which was their version of cowboys and Indians, the enemy side would have thorns glued onto their noses and say “hello” all the time.

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    The idea was that everything personal was political; in fact, henceforth nothing was supposed to be regarded as ‘personal’ or private.

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    The Chinese language is extremely hard to learn. It is the only major linguistic system in the world that does not have an alphabet; and it is composed of numerous complicated characters – ideograms – which have to be memorised one by one and, moreover, are totally unrelated to sounds.

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  • Author Jung Chang
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    One piece of information that made an impression on her was that individual Chinese lives mattered to the Westerners.

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