Benazir Bhutto Quotes - Page 2

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.

When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation - namely, life, liberty and justice for all.

No, I am not pregnant. I am fat. And, as the Prime Minister, its my right to be fat if I want to.

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

The military wants a system that protects its policies and privileges.

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.

I don't fear death. I remember my last meeting with my father when he told me, "You know, tonight when I will be killed, my mother and my father will be waiting for me." It makes me weepy ... but I don't think it can happen unless God wants it to happen because so many people have tried to kill me.

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.

I was a very shy girl who led an insulated life; it was only when I came to Oxford, and to Harvard before that, that suddenly I saw the power of people. I didn't know such a power existed, I saw people criticising their own president; you couldn't do that in Pakistan - you'd be thrown in prison.

What is important is that a political party articulates the mood of a generation.

The government I led gave ordinary people peace, security, dignity, and opportunity to progress.

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.

[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.

I believe that democracies do not go to war; that's the lesson of history, and I think that a democratic Pakistan is the world community's best guarantee of stability in Asia.

The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated... Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it.

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

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.

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

I have led an unusual life. I have buried a father killed at age 50 and two brothers killed in the prime of their lives. I raised my children as a single mother when my husband was arrested and held for eight years without a conviction - a hostage to my political career.

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.

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

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

Through democracy we can address the basic needs of the people, involve them as participants in planning and restore the authority of the government.