"If democracy is an event, China has not made breakthroughs. If it is a process, it is happening in China."

Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution, at a May 22 congressional executive hearing on China's democracy over the past three decades and its implications for the United States

"We have to learn from each other as we go forward. So that is the subject."

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking to reporters on May 23 before kicking off her first China visit after assuming office

"It is easy to get in, but almost impossible to get out."

U.S. President Barack Obama, decrying small print on credit card statements containing traps for unwary borrowers when he signed sweeping credit card reforms into law on May 22

"We shall have to build up to come back to the high growth track as early as possible."

India's new Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, pledging to protect the economy from the adverse impacts of the global slump and return the country to a high growth path

"For those who are directly or implicitly lobbying against climate action I have a clear message: Your ideas are out of date and you are running out of time."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaking to a meeting of more than 500 business leaders in Denmark on May 24

"What began as a great financial crisis and became a great economic crisis is now becoming a great crisis of unemployment, and if we don't take measures there is a risk of a great human and social crisis, with major political implications."

World Bank President Robert Zoellick, in an interview with Spanish Sunday newspaper El Pais