Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

I have always endeavoured to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion.

Like all Xhosa children, I acquired knowledge mainly through observation. We were meant to learn through imitation and emulation, not through questions.

I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonouring them.

Democracy meant all men were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people.

‘I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things. Those things I still had control over. And I decided not to give them away.’

We do not make the same distinctions among relations practised by whites. We have no half-brothers or half-sisters. My mother’s sister is my mother; my uncle’s son is my brother; my brother’s child is my son, my daughter.

reconciling with the people who had marshaled the horrible forces of apartheid, and sharing power with them.

the oppressor is also a prisoner of prejudice and narrow-mindedness,

‘Yes, I am your President. And if you work very hard in school and you learn a lot and you are nice to everybody, you too could grow up to be President of South Africa.’