The matter of people being attracted to other countries is a permanent problem in my view, it doesn't only face South Africa. A whole lot of countries in the world are faced with this problem.

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.

The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.

To me the footballs are approved by the league and game officials pregame and we play with what's out there. That's the only way that I have ever thought about that.

Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed!

Every great thing starts with an idea, followed by a doubt and finally a resolve to abandon or pursue. Victory is a treacherous journey.

Personally, I think Mitt Romney would be a great secretary of state.

What writes worse than a Theodore Dreiser? ... Two Theodore Dreisers.

[Ronald] Reagan seems to be a man of some basic convictions and on the other hand willing to let others do the ground homework, the detailed work.

Learn poetry by heart. If you know a poem by heart, no one can take it away from you, and you can take advantage of it anytime.

The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information.

I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.