Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward.

The freedom we enjoy is a richly textured gift handcrafted by ordinary folk

Our continent must be allowed to do its own things, charting its course and destiny.

We are extricating ourselves from a system that insulted our common humanity by dividing us from one another on the basis of race and setting us against each other as oppressed and oppressor. That system committed a crime against humanity.

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.

For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.

The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children.