“I found that a whole series of people opposed me simply on the grounds that I was a woman.”

[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.

All through the years of the Soviet empire, its Politburo held ‘elections.’ Of course, calling something an election and actually having it be an election are different things.

The United Nations charter gives every nation the right to self defence, therefore when the American embassies were bombed it was a matter of time before the Americans responded by going for what they suspected were the causes of the attack.

The U.S. came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact.

As a woman leader, I thought I brought a different kind of leadership. I was interested in women’s issues, in bringing down the population growth rate… as a woman, I entered politics with an additional dimension – that of a mother.

While living in America when I attended Harvard in the early 1970s, I saw for myself the awesome, almost miraculous, power of a people to change policy through democratic means.

The best hijab is in the eyes of the beholder.

Pakistan is heir to an intellectual tradition of which the illustrious exponent was the poet and philosopher Mohammad Iqbal. He saw the future course for Islamic societies in a synthesis between adherence to the faith and adjustment to the modern age.

I still want to return home whenever I get a chance.