I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

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.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

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.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.

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

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

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

We would like to see you departing peacefully.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute - a white skin.

You must show the world that you abhor fighting.

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.

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.

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.

Hate has no place in the house of God.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't.

I've never doubted that apartheid - because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil - was going to bite the dust eventually.

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

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

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.

In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

In the Bible, we first encounter God when he sides with a bunch of slaves against a powerful Pharaoh, an act of grace freely given.

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

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

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I'm quite shy.

Oh, 1994, April 27. There won't be a day like that ever again. I mean, the sky was blue, with a blueness that had never been there before.

Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.

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.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.