Miriam Defensor-Santiago Quotes

“As a factual matter, as in countries all over the world, technology and business practices have been running faster than legal responses and developments.”

“What makes me angry is when people know what is right but have, over the years, attuned themselves to the fact that what they're doing, stealing money from government, is acceptable.”

“Research shows that when women are empowered as political leaders, countries often experience higher standards of living with positive developments in education, infrastructure, and health care.”

“The Dalai Lama has taught me that the best way to live life is to try and avoid desire. Desire is really the basic source of unhappiness.”

“Since we all know that death is inevitable, I don't really see the difference between dying now and dying a decade later. So if I'm threatened with assassination, I welcome it!”

“In effect, the Internet is a global connection of interconnected computers. It has been described as truly a peer-to-peer system with many distributed nodes and no central point of control architecture.”

“Life is a consequence of our moral choices.”

“...and then I began to drift, fighting tears. I used to come here with Miriam. Miriam, my heart's desire. What was troubling her this morning? Maybe Kate had reproached her on the phone for leaving me? How dare Kate. Oh yeah? Go for it, my darling. Remind her of what she's missing. No, don't.”

“We could never agree about Boogie and I didn't share Miriam's reverence for professors. In fact, just in case I haven't mentioned it before, the pride of my office wall is my framed high-school graduation certificate, lit from above. Miriam has reproached me for it. "Take it down, darling," she once pleaded. But it still hangs there.”

“I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of telling the truth, how the telling could result in every level of hell reigning down on you, your skin scorched to the bone and then bone to ash and then nothing but a lingering odour of shame and decomposition, but now I was also beginning to understand the new and alien feeling of taking the risk and having the person on the other end of the telling, the listener, say: Bad shit at home? You guys are running away? Yeah, I said. I understand, said, Noehmi.”