Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

They think because they have put my husband on an island that he will be forgotten. They are wrong. The harder they try to silence him, the louder I will become!

If you are to free yourselves you must break the chains of oppression yourselves. Only then can we express our dignity, only when we have liberated ourselves can we cooperate with other groups. Any acceptance of humiliation, indignity or insult is acceptance of inferiority.

I cannot forgive him [Nelson Mandela] for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with his jailer De Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.

I will not allow the selfless efforts of my husband and his friends to be abandoned. I will continue the struggle for a free and equal South Africa.

To those who oppose us, we say, ‘Strike the woman, and you strike the rock.’

We have no guns – we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol. Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.

While greatly honored internationally, Mandela remained on the US terrorist list until 2008, when at last a congressional resolution allowed him to enter the ‘land of the free’ without special dispensation.

I hope that things will not come to provocations (during the soccer World Cup). If this happens I think it would have very serious consequences for the Ukrainian government in general.

Or stay in Chechnya and wait to be attacked? What should we do? I have said what we must do. We must go through the mountain caves and scatter and destroy all those who are armed. Perhaps after the presidential elections, we should introduce direct presidential rule there for a couple of years. We must rebuild the economy and the social services, show the people that normal life is possible. We must pull the young generation out of the environment of violence in which it is living. We must put a program of education in place . . . We must work. We must not abandon Chechnya as we did before. In fact, we did a criminal thing back then, when we abandoned the Chechen people and undermined Russia. Now we must work hard, and then transfer to full fledged political procedures, allowing them and us to decide how we can coexist. It is unavoidable fact: We must live together. We have no plans to deport Chechens, as Stalin once solved the problem. And Russia has no other choice. Nobody can impose a solution on us by force but we are prepared to take maximum consideration of Chechen

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, ‘We’re sorry we did it,’ that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it’s just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, ‘We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.’ Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.

In 1995, Russia virtually gave Chechnya de facto statehood and independence even though, de jure, it didn’t recognize Chechnya as an independent state. And I would like to emphasize strongly that Russia withdrew all of its troops, we moved the prosecutors, we moved all the police, dismantled all the courts, completely, 100 percent.

The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages…onward, to victory!

Imperialism: The final stage of Capitalism.

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as [inherently] exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it’s literally going to cease to exist.

I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

The House Armed Services Committee a couple of years ago described the role of Congress as that of a sometimes querulous but essentially kindly uncle who complains while furiously puffing on his pipe but who finally, as everyone expects, gives in and hands over the allowance.

People love me. And you know what, I have been very successful. Everybody loves me.

The revolution does not need historians.