I want to succeed. And I want to succeed in the best way possible, without caring whether people call my actions leftist or rightist.

Not only my parents but the whole family was involved in the resistance - my grandfather and grandmother, my uncles and aunts, my cousings of both sexes. So ever so often the police came and took them away, indiscriminately. Well, the fact that they arrested both my father and mother, both my grandfather and grandmother, both an uncle and an aunt, made me accustomed to looking on men and women with the same eyes, on an absolute plane of equality.

I see nothing wrong in sterilizing a man who has already brought eight or ten children into the world. Especially if it helps those eight or ten children to live better.

I don't care if I remain prime minister. I'm only interested in doing a good job as long as I'm capable and for as long as I don't get tired.

I always wanted to have children - if it had been up to me, I would have had eleven. It was my husband who wanted only two.

Opportunities are not offered. They must be wrested and worked for. And this calls for perseverance... and courage.

Until the day she died, my mother continued to fight for the rights of women. She joined all the women's movements of the time; she stirred up a lot of revolts. She was a great woman, a great figure. Women today would like her immensely.