Thabo Mbeki Quotes

Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times.

I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.

Our experience over the last 20 years has shown that indeed people must themselves become their own liberators. You cannot wait for somebody else to come and rescue you.

We should never become despondent because the weather is bad, nor should we turn triumphalist because the sun shines.

If you don't understand history, you will not be able to deal with today's issues.

The problem is not a lack of understanding of what we are saying and doing; the problem is difference of opinion about what to do.

I think you're a much happier person if you say 'Even if I get involved in politics, I'm only doing so in order to serve the people'. You will sleep much easier, not serving yourself, but having done your best to serve the people. Even if you have not succeeded, at least you've tried. You haven't stolen anything, and you haven't robbed the people.

As Africans, we need to share common recognition that all of us stand to lose if we fail to transform our continent.

When will the day come that our dignity will be fully restored, when the purpose of our lives will no longer be merely to survive until the sun rises tomorrow!

We are quite convinced, and we say this to the Palestinians, that violence is not going to solve the problem of Israel and the Middle East. We say that to the Israelis. We say it to the Palestinians.

A global human society, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable

None dare challenge me when i say i am an Afrikan.

Does HIV cause AIDS? Can a virus cause a syndrome? How? It can't, because a syndrome is a group of diseases resulting from acquired immune deficiency.

South Africa now needs skilled and educated people to say 'How do we manage and develop this democratic country?'

Read a textbook. It will tell you. These are the things for instance on the African continent that will contribute to immune deficiency, various tropical diseases because of poor infrastructure, general levels of poverty don’t get treated. Syphilis untreated or not properly treated, which as it happens is a big problem as I hear, gets treated, the symptoms disappear but in fact… it … that impacts on the immune system. You’ve got to deal with these things.

Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers, telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village.

You cannot just depend on the market, because the market will say: China needs oil; China needs coal; China needs whatever, and Africa has got all these things in abundance. And we go there and get them, and the more we develop the Chinese economy, the larger the manufacturing is, the more we need global markets - sell it to the Africans which indeed might very well destroy whatever infant industries are trying to develop on the continent. That is what the market would do.

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew.

A modern economy and society requires skilled people, so you need to train them.

We do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest

We can't treat the matter of black economic empowerment as just the redistribution of existing wealth. It really has to focus on new investment, on growth, on development of employment and so on and so on.

I don't imagine Heads of Government would ever be able to say I'm not an economist therefore I can't take decisions on matters of the economy; I'm not a soldier I can't take decisions on matters of defence; I'm not an educationist so I can't take decisions about education.

Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now!

Those who oppressed us described us as the Dark Continent!

The issue of racism and racial prejudice. It is very, very difficult to discuss. It is difficult to discuss the issue of apartheid. Many have made the observation that it is very difficult to find anyone in SA who ever supported apartheid because everyone was opposed, it was against our will and so on.