Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Quotes

If things do not change, there will be nothing left to change. Either power must pass to the people or everything will perish.

We(Pakistan) will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own (Atom bomb).... We have no other choice!

I am guiding you to seek truth from the facts of the historical conditions of our society and to identify the problems. The correct solutions will come with the correct identification of the problems.

If the people wanted my head I would bow without demur. If I had lost the confidence or respect of the people I would not want to live. The tragedy of the drama is that the very opposite is true.

Yes, there are circumstances where a bloody suppression is justifiable and justified.

I'm not trying to minimize things; I'm trying to bring them back to reality.

A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science. With modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search.

For instance, in the name of unity. You can't build without destroying.

A regime which puts in a bunker the highest law in the land does not have the moral authority to say that nobody is above the law.

Every government, every country, has the right to exercise force when necessary.

Lets build a monument for the veto. Lets build a monument for impotence and incapacity.

Pakistan was once called the most allied ally of the United States. We are now the most non-allied.

Mrs. [Indira] Gandhi can rightly boast of having won a war, but if she won it, she should first of all thank Yahya Khan and his gang of illiterate psychopaths.

I tried to explain that there was a great difference between me and Mujib [Rahiman]: he was a secessionist and I wasn't.

There's only one man really responsible for those events - Yahya Khan. Both he and his advisers were so drunk with power and corruption they'd even forgotten the honor of the army.

In March [1972] the unity of Pakistan depended on the suppression of the secessionists. But to carry it out with such brutality on the people instead of on those responsible wasn't necessary. That's not the way to convince poor people who've been told that with the Six Points there'll be no more hurricanes, no more floods, no more hunger. I spoke out against such methods more emphatically than anyone else, and when no one dared do so.

Tikka Khan won't try to stick his nose in politics.

In April [1972], after that fine business in Dacca, Yahya Khan sent for me. He looked satisfied, sure of himself, by now convinced he had the situation in hand. He offered me a drink. "Well, you politicians are really finished," he said. Then he said that not only Mujib but I too was considered an agitator, I too was preaching against the unity of Pakistan. "I'm always under pressure to arrest you, Bhutto" I got so angry I lost all control.

The sanction of force stands behind the medley of personal orders and regulations of Martial Law. The sanction of the people's consent stands behind the hierarchy of laws. In one situation, the population is regimented into acquiescence. In the other, the population voluntarily establishes a contract with Parliament.

To conclude, the tragedy of March 25 [1969] caught me by surprise. Yahya Khan fooled even me.

I would not let myself be intimidated by Yahya Khan, his methods had led us to disaster.

[Mujib Rahman] is mad, mad! And they're all mad, the press included, who repeat after him, "Three million dead, three million dead!" The Indians had let out the figure of one million. He came along and doubled it. Then tripled it. It's a characteristic of the man - he'd done the same for the hurricane.

Yahya Khan wasn't interested in the government of the country, he was interested in power for its own sake and nothing else.

Tear gas, rubber bullets, and I would have arrested all the leaders. Oh, only a disgusting drunkard like ex-President Yahya Khan could have sullied himself with an operation carried out so badly and bloodily.

The same goes for the refugees. Mrs.[Indira] Gandhi says ten million. It's obvious she started with that figure in order to legalize her offensive and invade East Pakistan. But when we invited the United Nations to check, the Indians were opposed. Why were they opposed? If the figure were exact, they shouldn't have been afraid of its being verified.