"The settlement of Gu Chujun's case marks an end to a once prevalent development mode of "corporate China" that mainly takes advantage of loopholes in laws and state policies."

Li Yang, analyst at China Merchants Securities Co.

"I'm neither a capital manipulator nor a financial predator."

Gu Chujun, defending his controversial investment approach in a 2003 interview with China's national TV broadcaster CCTV

"The construction of the new center and the launches of a new range of carrier rockets will be non-toxic and won't damage the environment."

Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut in space, dismissing worries about the environmental effects of a new space launch center to be built in the island province of Hainan

"I need to make money. If I don't I cannot survive. So how can I have political motives?"

Lou Jiwei, head of China's $200-billion sovereign wealth fund, quoted by a New York Times report on February 1 as saying that there could be no political motives in China's investing practices

"When you combine the strengths of our two companies, the result will be an incredibly competitive enterprise."

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, speaking to analysts and reporters after the world's biggest software company unveiled a $44.6-billion bid for leading Internet portal Yahoo, a move that is believed to take on the Google juggernaut

"We found severe failings and flaws in the lack of strategic thinking and planning, in both the political and the military echelons."

Report by an Israeli Government-appointed commission, which concludes that Israel's 2006 conflict with the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon was a missed opportunity and a grave failure for the Jewish state

"This administration has so twisted America's role, law and values that our own State Department, our military officers and, apparently, America's top law enforcement officer, are now instructed by the White House not to say that waterboarding is torture and illegal."

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, talking at the opening of a January 30 hearing on the legality of waterboarding

"The Islamic world is not an easy prey and will not remain a target."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in a written speech to the opening of the Fifth parliamentary union session of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Cairo on January 30