We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems.

I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.

We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

Success in politics demands that you must take your people into confidence about your views and state them very clearly, very politely, very calmly, but nevertheless, state them openly.

To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of huger and deprivation is to dehumanize them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid.

Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I feel down and got back up again.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.

Out of the experience of extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud..