“And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that (Hell) contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.”

“I learned from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed”

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”

“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time,”

“When stumbling blocks can become stepping stones, then these stones that the builders reject can equally become chief corner stones!”

“A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.”

“Trust in Him If you are tempted to give up on something or someone, put your trust in God and believe that even if you don’t have the power to change the circumstances, He does.” 

“Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of--something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possesed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalizing glimspes, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest--if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself--you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the things we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

“It takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it and appropriately act on it.”

“The purpose of freedom is to create it for others. Prison desk calendar, written on Robben Island, June 2, 1979” 

“El lamento nos deja sin energía. No podemos construir sobre el lamento. El temor al futuro nos distrae y nos llena de aprensión.”

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”

“God warns us to not get too attached to what’s around us because it is temporary. We’re told, “Those in frequent contact with the things of the world should make good use of them without becoming attached to them, for this world and all it contains will pass away.”