The time comes in the life of any nation when there remains only two choices - submit or fight.

Greece is the mother of democracy and South Africa is its youngest daughter

I hate racial discrimination most intensely and all its manifestations. I have fought all my life; I fight now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one, whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a Black man in a White man's court. This should not be I should feel perfectly at ease and at home with the assurance that I am being tried by a fellow South African, who does not regard me as an inferior, entitled to a special type of justice.

The question of education has nothing to do with the question of the vote. On numerous occasions it has been proved in history that people can enjoy the vote even if they have no education.

There is a constant struggle between good an evil in the world. It is up to good people to choose the right side

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.

In prison, illusions can offer comfort.