PEOPLE love quotes, especially inspirational ones. Chairman Mao Zedong's words, "The Chinese people have stood up", spoken in 1949 after the communist triumph in the civil war, still resonates among many, even if they don't remember exactly where and when the words were spoken.

So popular are sayings that America's Chinese restaurants serve "fortune cookies", each with words of Oriental wisdom printed on a tiny slip of paper hidden inside the cookie. These are one-liners, often humorous, such as "Confucius say, 'Man who jumps off Empire State Building is leaping to a conclusion'."

Such is the demand for quotations that there are websites that provide quotes for all occasions, from Confucius and Abraham Lincoln to, not surprisingly, the Dalai Lama.