The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

It has been my experience that people who are at cross-purposes with nature are cynical about mankind and ill at ease with themselves.

Do you know that, until recently, poor people brought children into the world for the sole purpose of making use of them? But how can you change, by force or all of a sudden, an age-old habit? The only way is to plan births, by one means or another.

At a certain point the family moved to Jaipur, where no woman could avoid the doli or purdah. They kept her in the house from morning to night, either cooking or doing nothing. [My mother] hated doing nothing, she hated to cook. So she became pale and ill, and far from being concerned about her health, my grandfather said, 'Who's going to marry her now?' So my grandmother waited for my grandfather to go out, and then she dressed my mother as a man and let her go out riding with her brothers.

Being prime minister isn't the only job in life! As far as I'm concerned, I could live in a village and be satisfied.

You don't help a country by supporting a military regime that denies any sign of democracy, and what defeated Pakistan was its military regime.

Life is a continuous process of adjustment.