Quote collection
666 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I like a leader who can, while pointing out a mistake, bring up the good things the other person has done. If you do that, then the person sees that you have a complete picture of him. There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated, even when you humiliate him rightly."
"Our freedom is also incomplete, dear compatriots, as long as we are denied our security by criminals who prey on our communities, who rob our businesses and undermine our economy, who ply their destructive trade in drugs in our schools, and who do violence against our women and children."
"In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains."
"I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people."
"I can't help it if the ladies take note of me; I am not going to protest."
"AIDS is no longer just a disease, it is a human rights issue."
"My time in prison only deepened my resolve against apartheid. Even while I was in prison, I fought against it, teaching my cellmates about white supremacy and how to fight against it."
"Living isn't just about doing for yourself,but what you do for others as well."
"Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement."
"Out of the experience of extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud."
"It is not our diversity which divides us; it is not our ethnicity, or religion or culture that divides us. Since we have achieved our freedom, there can only be one division amongst us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not."
"We can change the world and make it a better place. It is in your hands to make a difference."
"Our motto should be: let us make peace so that we can concentrate on the really important work that needs to be done. That is, alleviating the plight of the poor and the defenceless, for as long as most of humanity feels the pain of poverty we all remain prisoners."
"I am influenced more than ever before by the conviction that social equality is the only basis of human happiness."
"The impression that you are a demigod worried me. I wanted to be like an ordinary human being with virtues and vices."
"I hate racial discrimination most intensely and all its manifestations. I have fought all my life; I fight now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one, whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a Black man in a White man's court. This should not be I should feel perfectly at ease and at home with the assurance that I am being tried by a fellow South African, who does not regard me as an inferior, entitled to a special type of justice."
"By ancestry, I was born to rule."
"For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon."
"Let us give publicity to H.I.V./AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of H.I.V./AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary."
"South Africans have no concept of time and this is also why we can't solve poverty and social problems… It's now 10 years since the fall of the Apartheid government and we cannot blame Apartheid for being tardy."