Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor.

The people excited by ambitious demagogues, sooner or later return into the hands of the Aristocracy.

Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favourite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth, I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.

I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one's birth, whether one acknowledges it or not.

You undergraduates who see me for the first time have read your newspapers and heard on the air that I am, at the very least, an ogre - a consorter with Communists, a destroyer of the rich, a breaker of our ancient traditions.