“Being in jail is difficult too because it’s like being in a graveyard, you can’t do much.”

My goal is to prove that the fundamental battle for the hearts and minds of a generation can be accomplished only under democracy.

Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism.

Whatever my aims and agendas were, I never asked for power.

It is one thing being able to contest an election and to give the people hope that I can be the next prime minister. It is a totally different situation where the people of Pakistan are told that the results are already taken and the leader of your choice is banned.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a good example of how people, who are robbed of their right to vote, can protest and put an end to dictatorship.

Democracy is the best revenge.

It’s quite difficult for me not to be able to return to my country, but in my country justice has been murdered.

Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.

[On Richard M. Nixon:] Americans began with a president who couldn’t tell a lie and now they have one who can’t tell the truth.

The political parties have unanimously rejected the one-man constitutional changes.

Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power.

The clerics took to the mosque saying that Pakistan had thrown itself outside the Muslim world and the Muslim umar by voting for a woman, that a woman had usurped a man’s place in the Islamic society.

Oppression does not know the meaning of provincial boundaries. Aren’t our energies better spent fighting the common enemy instead of each other?

Like all children I had taken my father for granted. Now that I had lost him, I felt an emptiness that could never be filled. But I did not let myself cry, believing as a Muslim that tears pull a spirit earthward and won’t let it be free.

The best revenge is democracy.

A people inspired by democracy, human rights and economic opportunity will turn their back decisively against extremism.

The effect of Welfarism on freedom will be felt later on – after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try – by punishing the troublesome – to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

I went to jail at 16 for stealing tires off Cadillacs. When I got out I said, Never again.

We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.

Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there.

I could have killed her when we first met and I’ve been out of jail by now.

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see.