Verbatim

  • IN HIS OWN WORDS

    'No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.'

    --Long Walk to Freedom

    'Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.'

    --Declining an offer of freedom, February 1985

    'To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.'

    --Long Walk to Freedom

    'Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud.'

    --After being sworn in as President on May 10, 1994

    'The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.'

    --Long Walk to Freedom

    IN THEIR OWN WORDS

    'He's a saintly man, but he's also a very tough and shrewd politician. And a very, very loyal friend. He is a ferociously loyal friend.'

    BILL CLINTON, speaking about Mandela in 2004

    'I WAS IMPRESSED BY HOW TALL HE WAS, BY THE RAMROD STRAIGHTNESS OF HIS STATURE, AND REALIZED THAT THIS IS A VERY SPECIAL MAN.'

    F.W. DE KLERK, South African President who released Mandela and later served as his Deputy President, in 1989 on meeting Mandela for the first time while he was still a prisoner

    'You said many years ago, before the first of your 10,000 days in prison, that there is no easy walk to freedom. Your years of suffering, your nation's suffering, have borne that out.'

    GEORGE H.W. BUSH, in June 1990, on Mandela's first visit to the U.S. after he was released from prison

    'Black South Africa will not rest until he is free.'

    MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI, Zulu leader and critic of the African National Congress, advocating in 1988 for Mandela's release from prison

    'I felt that I was in the presence not of a guerrilla fighter or radical ideologue, but of a head of state.'

    SAMUEL DASH, American lawyer and the first American to visit Mandela in prison, after meeting the incarcerated antiapartheid leader in 1985

    Sources: ABC; AP (2); C-SPAN; CNN