A bright future beckons. The onus is on us, through hard work, honesty and integrity, to reach for the stars.
If you want to preach a revolutionary message, wear a suit.
Sometimes, I feel like one who is on the sidelines, who has missed life itself.
Even if you have a terminal disease, you don’t have to sit down and mope. Enjoy life and challenge the illness that you have.
I have retired, but if there’s anything that would kill me it is to wake up in the morning not knowing what to do.
I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination...
Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld – a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
I have always endeavoured to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion.
We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.
Education has become a very powerful weapon in the struggle to produce a well-developed person.
You have a limited time to stay on earth. You must try to use that period for the purpose of transforming your country into what you desire it to be: a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist country. And that is a great task.
I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses. We must never forget that it is our duty to protect this environment.
We can’t afford to be killing one another.
Children are the most important asset in a country. For them to become that asset, they must receive education and love from their parents.
Our people outside of prison used my name to mobilize the community locally and internationally. But for me to be treated separately from my colleagues, who had contributed as much as and even more than I had, would have been a betrayal of them.
I know that, throughout the world, there are good men and women concerned with the greatest challenges facing society today – poverty, illiteracy, and disease.
I will use the rest of my life to help the poor overcome the problems confronting them – poverty is the greatest challenge facing humanity. That is why I build schools; I want to free people from poverty and illiteracy.
Of course we desire education and we think it is a good thing, but you don’t have to have education in order to know that you want certain fundamental rights, you have got aspirations, you have got acclaims. It has nothing to do with education whatsoever.
I was neglected by my family because I had disappointed them – I’d run away from being forced into an arranged marriage, which was a big blow to them.
When I went to jail, I was a trained lawyer. And when the wardens received letters of demands or summonses, they didn’t have the resources to go to an attorney to help them. I would help them settle their cases, so they became attached to me and the other prisoners.