“I seek to lead a democratic Pakistan which is free from the yoke of military dictatorship and that will cease to be a haven, the very petri dish of international terrorism.”

In a way, a jail is a place where you can rest, read books and live with yourself.

Political dictatorship and social hopelessness create the desperation that fuels religious extremism.

Right now, they feel they have lost their voice, and their miseries have increased since my departure.

The Internet is the great equalizer.The technology which emanated from the Silicon Valley of California has more potential to ameliorate social inequality than any development in the history of the world, including the industrial revolution.

The Holy Book calls upon Muslims to resist tyranny. Dictatorships in Pakistan, however long, have, therefore, always collapsed in the face of this spirit.

The next few months are critical to Pakistan’s future direction as a democratic state committed to promoting peace, fighting terrorism and working for social justice.

I know death comes. I’ve seen too much death, young death.

I’m not into smoke-filled rooms. I don’t have the time for byzantine political intrigues.

Freedom is not an end. Freedom is a beginning.

We learned at an early age that it was men’s interpretation of our religion that restricted women’s opportunities, not our religion itself. Islam in fact had been quite progressive toward women from its inception.

America’s greatest contribution to the world is its concept of democracy, its concept of freedom, freedom of action, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought.

The next decade cannot be a decade of confrontation and contention. It cannot be east vs. West. It cannot be men vs. women. It cannot be Islam vs. Christianity. That is what the enemies of dialogue want.

Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance.

I am planning to return and contest the October elections in Pakistan.

I’ve never had a bank account in Switzerland since 1984. Why would the Swiss do this to me? Maybe the Swiss are trying to divert attention from the Holocaust gold scandal.

Our people are dying, poverty and unemployment are on the rise, but the rest of the world says that Musharraf is needed because [only] he can stop nuclear proliferation, [only] he [can launch] an operation in the tribal areas.

If you begin to consider yourself solely responsible to a political party, you’re half-way to a dictatorship.

There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.

Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.

Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law.

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.