Nelson Mandela

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle.

Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.

Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.

Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.

Give a child love, laughter and peace, not AIDS.

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that's how they'll react. But if you say, 'We want peace, we want stability,' we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

Whatever position I occupied, it was the result of colleagues - of my comrades in the movement - who had decided in their wisdom to use me for the purpose of focusing the attention of the country and the international community on me.

The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.

Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it's very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.