After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

In all disputes, a point is arrived at where no party, no matter how right or wrong it might have been at the start of that dispute, will any longer be totally in the right or totally in the wrong. Such a point I believe, has been reached in this debate... Let us not equivocate. A tragedy of unprecedented proportions is unfolding in Africa.

True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.

Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.

Out of the experience of extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud.

At the meeting I argued that the state had given us no alternative to violence. I said it was wrong and immoral to subject our people to armed attacks by the state without offering them some kind of alternative. I mentioned again that people on their own had taken up arms. Violence would begin whether we initiated it or not. Would it not be better to guide this violence ourselves, according to principles where we saved lives by attacking symbols of oppression, and not people? If we did not take the lead now, I said, we would soon be latecomers and followers to a movement we did not control.

When you are behind bars with no hope of release, you need to find strength wherever you can. Personally, I found strength in Michael Jackson.