What we did was to try and exploit that spirit [the idea of giving], which was there even before I approached individual South Africans [to give to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund]. I think we must start from that angle.

I admire young people who are concerned with the affairs of their community and nation perhaps because I also became involved in struggle whist I was still at school.

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.

With freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk has not ended yet.

Love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

Poverty is not natural; it is man-made

The suffering inflicted, and more often than not on the most vulnerable sectors of society, demeans all of us as humanity. That it is invariably women, children, the aged and disabled who suffer in these conflicts stands to the added shame of humankind.