It is most unusual to return to a place that has changed in ways you yourself have altered.

No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.

Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.

Africans require, want, the franchise on the basis of one man one vote. They want political independence.

The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.