How can I be expected to believe that this same racial discrimination which has been the cause of so much injustice and suffering right through the years, should now operate here to give me a fair and open trial?....consider myself neither morally nor legally obliged to obey laws made by a Parliament in which I am not represented. That the will of the people is the basis of the authority of government, is a principle universally acknowledged as sacred throughout the civilized world.

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don`t ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.

I hate racial discrimination most intensely and all its manifestations. I have fought all my life; I fight now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one, whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a Black man in a White man`s court. This should not be I should feel perfectly at ease and at home with the assurance that I am being tried by a fellow South African, who does not regard me as an inferior, entitled to a special type of justice.

It always seems impossible until its done.

We need to exert ourselves that much more, and break out of the vicious cycle of dependence imposed on us by the financially powerful: those in command of immense market power and those who dare to fashion the world in their own image

I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don`t ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.

I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

For 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.