Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Friday told a group of schoolchildren that his "soft but firm" political temperament had been inspired by British statesman Winston Churchill.
Quoting Churchill's purported saying "One should be firm without being rough", Gilani said he adopted the same disposition and this paid him dividends in the shape of a harmonious and amicable political atmosphere.
"It is my desire to be remembered as a person who shunned politics of vengeance," Gilani told award-winning students at a function organised by the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education.
He said he could proudly state that there had not been a single political prisoner during his tenure as Prime Minister.
"I did not take revenge even from those who put me in jail for five years for giving jobs to the unemployed," he said.
Sometimes, prisons prove to be "great reformatory cells", he said.
Gilani quoted another statement by Churchill, "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind", and urged the students to follow such golden rules in their lives.
"We want people to learn skills and get specialised knowledge to prove themselves an asset for the nation," he said.
In a lighter vein, he said, "Gone are the days when only idle people joined politics in this country."
Politics is now a field for educated and learned people, he said.
PTI
First Published: Friday, October 14, 2011, 15:49