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My approach to gymnastics in Beijing was heavily based on the amount of difficulty I could do. -- Shawn Johnson
I went to China for a brief working visit, and I thought that Shanghai was interesting, but Beijing totally grabbed me. -- Marcus Brigstocke
Squash has the credentials to become an olympic event and our goal is to see the sport in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. We are working towards this and will keep trying even if our bid is not successful. -- Jahangir Khan
Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish. -- Ma Jian
It took years, honestly, to deal with the disappointment of Beijing. -- Ryan Hall
Beijing residents joke that to get a free smoke all they have to do is open their windows! -- Lee Hsien Loong
You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can't visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally, -- Barack Obama
I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese. -- Mira Sorvino
We sincerely ask the Beijing authorities across the Strait to view the election result from a positive perspective, to accept the democratic decision of the Taiwanese people. -- Chen Shui-bian
The world awaits Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Olympics, an occasion which will bring into the global spotlight the dramatic advances China is making in enhancing the quality of life for its people. -- Alexander Haig
I feel very sorry for the one or two North Korean defectors who were caught by Chinese police while entering South Korean or foreign embassies in Beijing, but their arrest drew the whole attention of the world. -- Kim Young-sam
I've had meetings with Fidel Castro. I've had meetings with Kim Il-Sung. I've had meetings with other dictators. I've met with the Butcher of Beijing. You know, I think it's important to hear, you know, each other's perspective. -- Gary Ackerman
Our policy for the last many years has been to deter the Chinese government in Beijing from ever coming into the position where they thought they had enough leverage over the U.S. to cross the Straits of Taiwan. -- Bob Filner
I think the biggest thing was that I was putting pressure on myself leading up to Beijing. Now I am learning how to take that pressure off and seeing this as an incredible opportunity, but not like, 'I absolutely have to medal. -- Ryan Hall
Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. -- Lester R. Brown
Every case involving cybercrime that I've been involved in, I've never found a master criminal sitting somewhere in Russia or Hong Kong or Beijing. It always ends up that somebody at the company did something they weren't supposed to do. They read an email, went to a website they weren't supposed to. -- Frank Abagnale
I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world. -- Betty Friedan
It's kind of nice in some ways having an Olympic Trials where I finished second. You can kind of go in more under the radar facing a 2:03 guy and facing a lot of dudes who are faster than I am, whereas, before Beijing, I had one of the top 10 times in the field, or something like that. -- Ryan Hall
Beijing is my favorite city in China. -- Andrew Lau
Our real debt ceiling isn't decided by Washington; it's decided by Beijing. -- David Burge
Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare. -- Ai Weiwei
Badminton in Beijing is huge - it's one of their top three sports. -- Howard Bach
Beijing has a glut of charming and traditional or brash and luxurious places to stay. -- Evan Osnos
When I see someone from Beijing owning 50 houses in Auckland I don't think that's neo-racist -- Winston Peters
I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually. -- Ma Jian
Beijing would indeed consider vetoing any American effort to sanction Iran at the Security Council. -- Li Zhaoxing
When you live in Beijing for a while, you gain a finely tuned understanding of air. -- Evan Osnos
China should be another United States from an economic standpoint. Beijing should be another Silicon Valley. -- Marc Andreesen
Beijing is an example of [families were displaced for the Olympics]. Something like 10,000 families were moved out. -- Gary Hustwit
Beijing is constructing a 100,000 m2 modern art museum, yet it will not feature any of my work. -- Ai Weiwei
I think Beijing deserves the Olympics in order to be with all the rest of the world recognized, -- Luciano Pavarotti
The Beijing Olympics represent China's grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status. -- Ma Jian
Just as we take a train to get to Beijing or Manhattan, we take death to reach a star. -- David Paul Kirkpatrick
Although the general security situation for the Beijing Olympics remains stable, we still face the challenges of terrorism, separatism and extremism. -- Zhou Yongkang
I have a lot of bitter memories from Beijing. Hopefully, we can erase those memories and bring the gold back to Japan. -- Kohei Uchimura
To win more medals at Beijing is just fantastic, and British cycling has come a huge way in the last few years. -- Bradley Wiggins
In my 20s, when I was a photojournalist in Beijing. I joined an underground art group and put on clandestine exhibitions of my paintings. -- Ma Jian
As a student in Beijing in 1996, I sometimes marveled at the sheer obscurity of the movies that somehow made it onto pirated discs in China. -- Evan Osnos
Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don't design it, somebody else has to design it. -- Ai Weiwei
In my fifth year in Beijing, I moved into a one-story brick house beside the Confucius Temple, a seven-hundred-year-old shrine to China's most important philosopher. -- Evan Osnos
The Beijing government avidly asserts its control over matters of reincarnation as a way of securing the loyalty and political complexion of influential Tibetan figures. -- Evan Osnos
Imperfect though it may be, the Beijing Platform for Action is the strongest statement of consensus on women's equality, empowerment and justice ever produced by governments. -- Bella Abzug
I know my Beijing medal has been a watershed moment in the history of Indian boxing , but personally speaking, I would like to better it in London. -- Vijender Singh
I came back [to Beijing ] because that's the only time I had an excuse to come back, or otherwise I would never have a reason to come back. -- Ai Weiwei
Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now. -- Edward Snowden
I used to see Estee Lauder's ads everywhere in the subways of Beijing, and I thought how wonderful it would be if the model on them was myself! -- Liu Wen
The Olympics brought a lot of development to Beijing, but I don't see that there have been any changes to human rights as a result of the Olympics. -- Rebecca MacKinnon
Tiananmen Square in early 1989 attracted many dreamers like Ma Jian, who returned from Hong Kong to a one-room shack in Beijing in order to join the student protests. -- Pankaj Mishra
When Richard Nixon came to Beijing in the winter of 1972, China was still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, so it had a limited array of entertainment to provide. -- Evan Osnos
The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can't breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution. -- Joe Biden
You walk into the playgrounds in Shanghai and Beijing, and you see youngsters who are shorter, shaking and baking and having attitude. And Jeremy Lin is going to inspire all of them. -- David Stern
The heaviest snowfall in over 60 years is being reported in Beijing, China. To give you an idea of how bad it is, the army is now using snowplows to run over dissidents. -- Jay Leno
While Google no longer has a search engine operation inside China, it has maintained a large presence in Beijing and Shanghai focused on research and development, advertising sales, and mobile platform development. -- Rebecca MacKinnon
The Great Walk to Beijing was a fundraiser for my cancer center. It was a three-week trek with fellow cancer thrivers, including celebrities ranging from Joan Rivers to Leeza Gibbons and Olympians. -- Olivia Newton-John
The 'Great Walk to Beijing' was a fundraiser for my cancer center. It was a three-week trek with fellow cancer 'thrivers,' including celebrities ranging from Joan Rivers to Leeza Gibbons and Olympians. -- Olivia Newton-John
Team GB's success at the Beijing Olympics can, in part, be said to have been made in Manchester. For example, all the cycling medal winners trained at Manchester's velodrome, the National Cycling Centre. -- Lucy Powell
In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued." (From a speech read on video on August 31, 1995 before the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, China) -- Aung San Suu Kyi
My goal is to get on the national team. People joke that we'll be able to go to Beijing in 2008, but it's just jokes right now. Hopefully I'll be able to make it a reality. -- Lindsay Thompson
Beijing didn't go the way I planned and I would have liked to have performed a little bit better personally. After Beijing that is what stuck in my mind. I want a better Olympic finish. -- Alicia Sacramone
When I moved to Beijing in 2005 to write, I was accustomed to hearing the story of China's transformation told in vast, sweeping strokes - involving one fifth of humanity and great pivots of politics and economics. -- Evan Osnos
I went to Beijing for the Olympics and was literally right across the track from Usain Bolt. And when he gets to full stride, for every two steps the other guy's taking, he's just taking one. -- Wendell Pierce
Beijing's Olympics were very grand - they were trying to throw a party for the world, but the hosts didn't enjoy it. The government didn't care about people's feelings because it was trying to create an image. -- Ai Weiwei
Aline and I have travelled a very long, very hard road together, from our working class homes in rural Quebec to the palaces of London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Politics was the route, public service the reward. -- Jean Chretien
By tradition, Beijing is a city of walls, sheltering its intrigues and ambitions behind a series of concentric barriers from the Great Wall down to courtyard homes that draw sunlight only from the gardens at their core. -- Evan Osnos
Now, the Chinese people are outraged and they are sending clear signals to Beijing: "do not succumb to the West." "If you do, our nation will suffer immensely, and the rest of the world will turn to ashes." -- Andre Vltchek
The Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo show just how much effort China is willing to spend to enter the global stage. But while China desires to understand the world, it fails to accept its universal values. -- Ai Weiwei
No matter where I go - London, Beirut, Jerusalem, Washington, Beijing, or Bangalore - I'm always looking to rediscover that land of ten thousand lakes where politics actually worked to make people's lives better, not pull them apart. -- Thomas Friedman
In Athens I was 17 and I didn't have any expectations. I was just swimming fast and racing everybody. I didn't have the joy after my races in 2007. I didn't want to go to Beijing. I had to for sponsors. -- Laure Manaudou
On top of my to-do list in preparing for Beijing is 'On China' by Henry Kissinger, who has had firsthand experience with every top Chinese leader since Mao, so his insights are valuable and his access is perhaps unrivaled. -- Gary Locke
While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel. -- Ma Jian
President Obama is in China now for an economic summit in Beijing. The president wore a traditional purple silk shirt along with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. That's after they taught Putin how to put a shirt ON. -- Jimmy Fallon
At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can't afford to retire at 55. -- Erica Jong
In the final years of his life, when former Communist Party Chief Zhao Ziyang lived under house arrest, in Beijing, his aging friends resorted to donning white doctors' coats in order to slip past the guards stationed outside his home. -- Evan Osnos
The obvious precedent for Beijing 2008 was the Berlin Olympics, in 1936. Both were showcases for a muscle-flexing nation, although Hitler made an elementary error when he chose not to dress his young National Socialists in lime-green catsuits laced with twinkling fairy lights. -- Anthony Lane
Often GOP political strategy seems like the human wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm their adversaries, the GOP uses huge campaign budgets as a substitute for strategy, thought or issues. -- Dick Morris
The defining issue is that the government in Taiwan was considered to be the government of all of China, and the authorities in Beijing were not recognized as a government of China. So Taiwan was the residuary for all of China. -- Henry A. Kissinger
When we were in Beijing, they were all "it's an honor, you're playing at the oldest rock club in Beijing". And I was all "oh crazy how old is it?" And then were all: "5 years old."Asia is just very different. -- Mac DeMarco
My hometown is a very boring city. There isn't a lot of industry - there are a lot of trees. It's not like Beijing where the sky is always dark. In my city the sky is blue and the sun shines. -- Liu Wen
If China's expansion into Africa and Russia's into Latin America and the former Soviet Union are any indication, Silicon Valley's ability to expand globally will be severely limited, if only because Beijing and Moscow have no qualms about blending politics and business. -- Evgeny Morozov
In the States, you can buy Chinese food. In Beijing you can buy hamburger. It's very close. Now I feel the world become a big family, like a really big family. You have many neighbors. Not like before, two countries are far away. -- Jet Li
This week, the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years. People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China's relationship with the outside world. -- Ai Weiwei
I think the biggest thing was that I was putting pressure on myself leading up to Beijing. Now I am learning how to take that pressure off and seeing this as an incredible opportunity, but not like, 'I absolutely have to medal.' -- Ryan Hall
Edward Snowden may not be a Chinese mole, but he might as well be. He's just handed Beijing a major score, while the NSA struggles to pick up the pieces - and the rest of us pay the price in terms of future national security. -- Arthur L. Herman
The Beijing Olympics were an exercise in Chinese soft power. Americans have the 'Voice of America' and the Fulbright scholarships. But, the fact is, in fact, that probably Hollywood and MTV and McDonalds have done more for American soft power around the world than any specifically government activity. -- Shashi Tharoor
Dalai Lama was leading his country during the rigors of World War II, he was in Beijing for a year in 1954; he was up against Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai from the time that he was fifteen. So he's no newcomer or naive when it comes to politics. -- Pico Iyer
Geopolitical drama lessened but did not die after the Cold War; in 2008, the specter of thousands of seeming automatons banging drums at the opening of the Beijing Games frightened and enthralled the world, reminding us that China was a nation on the rise, a competitor for global dominance. -- Ben Shapiro
I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture. -- Ai Weiwei
Space is about 100 kilometers away. That's far away"?I wouldn't want to climb a ladder to get there"?but it isn't that far away. If you're in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. -- Randall Munroe
I took my little brother, and we went from Beijing to Ulan Bator, and then took a helicopter to the southern Gobi.Streams, grass, and sand dunes to climb. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Everybody needs to go to Mongolia just to see what it is to be a human being again. -- Milla Jovovich
Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction -- Tash Aw
I painted the words "GREAT ADVENTURE" in Beijing, Dallas, San Francisco, Copenhagen, and Japan. What it means to me is completely different to everybody else. And that's what I love about random words and phrases taken out of context: everyone applies their own context. If you want to apply something political or meaningful to a word I wrote on the side of the wall, then it's up to you. -- Ben Eine
Already 2008 has proved a tumultuous year in terms of global perceptions of China, and there are still 59 days to go until the Beijing Olympics. The tragedy of the Sichuan earthquake followed hard on the heels of the riots in Tibet and the demonstrations surrounding the Olympic torch relay. -- Martin Jacques
In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return. -- Ma Jian
It will be interesting to see if Seoul's urban vocabulary of numerous, ever-present interactive screens will translate to other cities such as Beijing, London, and New York. It will also be intriguing to see if smaller cities and towns adopt aspects of Seoul's screen culture throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. -- Jan Chipchase
I was still young when I missed Beijing. I was favourite to win a medal but I knew I had time. My coach advised me to stay at school and finish my exams. Even if I had gone and won the Olympics, I might not have handled the pressure. So I moved on. -- David Rudisha
Imagine a State occasion where the Queen is wearing trainers with her tiara because she thinks it will make people like her better, more folksy. It's unthinkable. But that's patently the thought process Gordon Brown (or his spin doctor) went through before the Prime Minister appeared on the world stage in Beijing without his suit and tie. -- Peter York

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