[I] read Anne Frank's diary [while imprisoned] on Robben Island and derived much encouragement from it.

Of course we desire education and we think it is a good thing, but you don't have to have education in order to know that you want certain fundamental rights, you have got aspirations, you have got acclaims. It has nothing to do with education whatsoever.

We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.

Thinking too well of people often allows them to be better than they otherwise would.

There are people here [in South Africa] who, whatever the debate is on a particular issue, their dominating idea is that at the end of the debate we must emerge stronger than we were before and closer to one another.

When we decided to take up arms, it was because the only other choice was to surrender and to submit to slavery.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.