F W De Klerk Quotes

#1. It was fortunate in looking back for South Africa and its entire people that Mandela and I found it possible to work together even though big strains developed between us from time to time.

F. W. De Klerk

#2. The relationship between me and President Mandela right at the beginning was not a very well-established relationship. It was based on two meetings.

F. W. De Klerk

#3. Peter Watts delivers-solid, inventive hard sf about the deep sea, but as we've never seen before. This moves like the wind.

Gregory Benford

#4. I played an integral part in helpings formulating that new vision ... that we must abandon apartheid and accept one united South Africa with equal rights for all, with all forms of discrimination to be scrapped from the statute book.

F. W. De Klerk

#5. The question that we must ask is whether we are making progress toward the goal of universal peace. Or are we caught up on a treadmill of history, turning forever on the axle of mindless aggression and self-destruction?

F. W. De Klerk

#6. People pretend to know me when they don't. I feel uncomfortable when I feel like I don't remember someone.

Isabelle Fuhrman

#7. I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.

Amy Bloom

#8. My predecessor, P. W. Botha, had an inner circle, and I did not like it. I preferred decisions to evolve out of cabinet discussions. That way, we achieved real co-ownership of our policies.

F. W. De Klerk

#9. We live in an era of revolution, the revolution of rising expectations.

Adlai Stevenson

#10. I have made the most profound apology in front of the Truth Commission and on other occasions about the injustices which were wrought by apartheid.

F. W. De Klerk

#11. They call me eccentric. They used to call me nuts. I haven't changed. The only difference between being eccentric and being nuts is the number of security boxes you own.

Al McGuire

#12. Above all, we owe it to the children of the world to stop the conflicts and to create new horizons for them.

F. W. De Klerk

#13. I'm going to tell Mother!" Joffrey exclaimed.

George R R Martin

#14. When I talk about the end of apartheid, I prefer not to claim the honor that I have ended it.

F. W. De Klerk

#15. A mad man sees what he sees.

George R R Martin

#16. The government that came into power after the April 1994 elections was going to need a budget. It was drafted by our finance minister, Derek Keys, and he convinced them of the necessity to stay within the free-market principles that had been in force in South Africa for decades.

F. W. De Klerk

#17. The ANC party from time to time comes with legislation which, if accepted and if not nullified by the constitution of court, would have the effect of undermining the constitution and eroding its values.

F. W. De Klerk

#18. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses.

Bobby Baldwin

#19. In our quest for peace, we should constantly ask ourselves what we should do to create conditions in which peace can prosper.

F. W. De Klerk

#20. I believe that first impressions are very important.

F. W. De Klerk

#21. I felt a sense of fulfillment that an action plan, which I'd laid on the table on the 2nd of February 1990, had been fulfilled, had been properly implemented within the time frame which I envisaged.

F. W. De Klerk

#22. Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.

Plato

#23. It was an honour for me to have been able to work with Mr. Mandela in the process that led to the adoption of the interim constitution and our first democratic elections in April 1994.

F. W. De Klerk

#24. When I first met Mandela, we did not discuss anything of substance; we just felt each other out. He spent a long time expressing his admiration for the Boer generals and how ingenious they were during the Anglo-Boer war.

F. W. De Klerk

#25. Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign. It does not flourish where there is ignorance and a lack of education and information.

Frederik Willem De Klerk

#26. You cannot say we are a healthy, dynamic democracy when one party wins almost two-thirds of the vote.

F. W. De Klerk

#27. He was a book I wanted to read. The mystery between his pages called to me like a really good sale at the mall.

Cambria Hebert

#28. For many years, I supported the concept of separate states.

F. W. De Klerk

#29. President Mandela was not a hands-on president at any time.

F. W. De Klerk

#30. What I haven't apologised for is the original concept of seeking to bring justice to all South Africans through the concept of nation states.

F. W. De Klerk