I'm coming to believe more and more in the truth that everything we do has consequences. A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

I believe history teaches us a categorical lesson: that once a people are determined to become free, then nothing in the world can stop them reaching their goal.

Our parents will maybe sometimes when they are upset with us and we have been troublesome say something like "Mommy really doesn't like a naughty child." And we think that we have to earn the approval, earn the love of our parents. And then we transfer it to God and think we have to earn... We don't have to earn it! God loves us.

Bringing people together is what i call 'ubuntu,' which means 'I am because we are.' Far too often people think of themselves as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

If everyone who wants to see an end to poverty, hunger and suffering speaks out, then the noise will be deafening.

I have struggled against tyranny. I didn't do that in order to substitute another.