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.

Dictatorships by their nature are unrepresentative as they neglect the social needs of the people.

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.

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

Freedom is not an end. Freedom is a beginning.

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.

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