No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

The authorities liked to say that we received a balanced diet; it was indeed balanced — between the unpalatable and the inedible.

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

I have always believed that exercise is the key not only to physical health but to peace of mind.