Islamabad, Oct 15 (IANS): Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said he drew inspiration from great British statesman Winston Churchill to be "soft but firm".
"One should be firm without being rough," Gilani said this Churchill's excerpt while addressing the award-winning students of the matric and intermediate levels here Friday.
He said he had adopted the same disposition that paid him rich dividends in the form of a harmonious and amicable political atmosphere in the country.
"It is my desire to be remembered as a person who shunned the politics of vengeance," the official APP news agency quoted him as saying.
Gilani said there had been not 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 on giving jobs to the unemployed," he said at the function organized by the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education at the PM's secretariat.
"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind", Gilani quoted another of Churchill's excerpt and urged the students to follow this golden rule in their lives.
"We want people to learn skills and get specialized knowledge to prove them as an asset for the nation."
In a lighter vein he said: "Gone are the days when only idles joined politics in this country."