I don't think there would be many examples of South Africa pushing its weight around the African Continent. I don't think the facts would substantiate that argument.

Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times.

Our experience over the last 20 years has shown that indeed people must themselves become their own liberators. You cannot wait for somebody else to come and rescue you.

We should never become despondent because the weather is bad, nor should we turn triumphalist because the sun shines.

As Africans, we need to share common recognition that all of us stand to lose if we fail to transform our continent.

When will the day come that our dignity will be fully restored, when the purpose of our lives will no longer be merely to survive until the sun rises tomorrow!

Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers, telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village.

Does HIV cause AIDS? Can a virus cause a syndrome? How? It can't, because a syndrome is a group of diseases resulting from acquired immune deficiency.

A global human society, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable

None dare challenge me when i say i am an Afrikan.

The problem is not a lack of understanding of what we are saying and doing; the problem is difference of opinion about what to do.

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.

Because when you’re laughing, there is no other emotion in that moment except for joy.

His smile was small and immediate, crooked, like I’d put his whole world off its axis, but he was somehow okay with that.

The kids (in the Jesus Movement) weren't singing for themselves. It seemed like they were singing TO Someone.

A leader's job is not to put greatness into people, but rather to recognize that it already exists, and to create an environment where that greatness can emerge and grow.

You cannot train a horse with shouts and expect it to obey a whisper.

[Barack] Obama is the great divider, he has totally used race. And it should have been the other way around. He had an opportunity to unify and he didn't do that.

If you keep bashing your head against the same wall, at some point you're going to fall over and be still for awhile.

Tantra is for extremists, but balanced extremists.

I was into opera as a kid - I'd play 'Carmen' and sing and dance. My mom signed me up for a theater group before preschool, and I never looked back.