Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.

Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.

When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.

But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.

Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it - oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.