Apartheid Quotes

As a young woman, I attended Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was then not segregated. But I witnessed the weight of Apartheid everywhere around me.

Vegetarianism is a link to perfection and peace. But it's a small link. There are lots of other issues: apartheid , vivisection, political prisoners, the arms race. There's so much going on in this world today, so much ignorance among people. That's not to say I'm not standing amongst everybody. But the point is, what can we do now? That's the thing about vegetarianism; it's an individual's decision and it's something you have control over. How many things do we really have control over?

Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa.

The history of apartheid-era South Africa is incredibly sad and at times infuriatingly incomprehensible.

I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones.

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.

The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.

We have introduced a rule of law. That never existed for centuries in this country [South Africa], especially under the apartheid regime, when the law was reduced into disrepute.

Jews allow to steal lands from Palestinians, only because they are Jews, and those are Palestinian. I want to repeat it, because people here in America don't believe it. We have a new law that settlers allowed to steal private lands of Arabs and take it to Jews. This is an official law. And now they're going to ban everyone who criticize a pure apartheid law. So, in a way, it's horrific. It's only everyone who stand for civil right in the minimum level - liberals, not radical - is not allowed to Israel.

apartheid still hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud left over from chemical warfare.

The deep inequalities that persist are visible reminders of the effects of apartheid and colonialism. Until these scars are healed, the vision of our Constitution will not have been achieved.

Israel is much worse than the original apartheid state.

Zionism is an abominable, racist and colonial movement. Like all colonial and apartheid systems, it's in the interest of all that it be swept away. My hope is to see it replaced, without any bloodshed, with a democratic, secular and lay state – for example on the borders of historic Palestine – and where Palestinians and Israelis could live under equal rights of citizenship without ethnic and religious discrimination. It's a wish that I hope will soon become a reality.

I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come.

If this be the Messiah, then I do not wish to see his coming

Apartheid does not happen spontaneously, like bad weather conditions.

If we don't move forward with regard to creating a non-racial society in South Africa and we allow this legacy of apartheid to persist, these divisions between black and white in wealth and income and so on, in the future you would indeed have an ugly upheaval.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

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

My own electorate, which I represented for 36 years as an anti-apartheid politician, had a considerable number of Jewish voters supporting me throughout my career.

One can't erase the tremendous burden of apartheid in 10 years, 20 years, I believe, even 30 years.

Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it - oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

There are many different rivers that lead into despair: there's poverty; there's political repression; there's gender apartheid - there's a sense of culture loss; there's religious fanaticism.

Criminality is always the result of poverty.

With freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk has not ended yet.

I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

No one can compare us to the apartheid regime. It's not like in South Africa between the blacks and the whites who belong to the same nation, or in Berlin where you find parents living on the eastern side and their children in the western side.

Apartheid - both petty and grand - is obviously evil.

Battling racism and battling heterosexism and battling apartheid share the same urgency inside me as battling cancer.

Arthur Ashe had been the first black athlete to play Johannesburg at the time of apartheid.

The South Africans decided that they would like to prove to the world they did not have any nuclear weapons and their decision was not doubted because it was the end of the Cold War, it was also the end of apartheid.

Poverty and the rule of race that is called apartheid drive the Transkeian migrant from security on the land to work in the cities, and then back again.

There are, of course, all sorts of other unpleasant regimes outside the walls as well - the military dictators of Latin America and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

We believe that the world, too, can destroy apartheid, firstly by striking at the economy of South Africa.

Poverty is not natural; it is man-made

Obama's not down for the civil rights struggle, and he certainly wasn't down for the apartheid struggle, but he's clearly gonna take advantage of it and insert himself in such a way as to make it look like he is single-handedly responsible for apartheid going by the wayside.

Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

I will never regret not denouncing apartheid.

If the ANC does to you what the apartheid government did to you, then you must do to the ANC what you did to the apartheid government.

We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

All of my life had been spent in the shadow of apartheid. And when South Africa went through its extraordinary change in 1994, it was like having spent a lifetime in a boxing ring with an opponent and suddenly finding yourself in that boxing ring with nobody else and realising you've to take the gloves off and get out and reinvent yourself.

There should be a class on apartheid. There should be a class on why people are hungry, but there are not. There are classes on...gym. Physical Education.

Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity.

It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere...That's the world! On which hope sits!

The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians...

The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.

I didn't actually realise what apartheid meant. I'm probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses.

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.