We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity — a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.

I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.

The authorities liked to say that we received a balanced diet; it was indeed balanced - between the unpalatable and the inedible.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of huger and deprivation is to dehumanize them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid.

It is my greatest wish that the Children’s Fund should continue to be a beacon of hope and light.

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.