Top 1034 Quotes & Sayings by South African Authors - Page 10

The facts are always less than what really happened.

I've got to where am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found - the wealth of African culture.

I am a forward-looking person and live in the moment to build for the future.

The reason swimming is one of the hardest sports is because you have to be in the pool by yourself every day, making that sacrifice. There's no time to do anything else.

In a way, it is easier to be the younger sibling, as the older one has to pave the way.

Advertising seemed almost natural to me because it was a business where you had to inform, persuade and educate. And so from being a junior copywriter to being the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the country took me 4.5 years, which is, well, a fairly spectacular rise.

Dangerous because your present Administration and its specialized agencies by all accounts know no restraint in hitting out at any perceived enemy of America, and nobody or nothing can protect one from their vindictiveness.

There is nothing in ANC policy which calls for attacks on civilians in supermarkets, schools, and cinemas unless these are regarded as military installations.

Naturally our Government would not consent to such terms, and so the war had to proceed.

I'm a fairly tormented artist, and I'm less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.

I wish you to inform the Court that my absence, though deliberate, is not intended in any way to be disrespectful. Nor is it prompted by any fear of the punishment which might be inflicted on me.

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. To say you've got to inquire, you've got to be testing your knowledge all the time in order to be more effective in what you're doing.

Generally I don't say too much on the field. However, I am a fast bowler and with that comes the responsibility of saying a word or two and getting in a guy's face.

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!

My whole swimming career was about training to beat Michael Phelps in any race I possibly could.

I lived in South Africa until I was 11 when we first immigrated. My mom had sent me back there when I was 14 for summer vacation. I wasn't doing very well in school, my grades were slipping. I called my mom one day and told her that I wasn't coming back. I ended up staying there until I was 17 before coming back to North America.

The truth about people at every economic level of life is you get those who are kind and who are not, those who are greedy, whether they be rich or poor. That's a common thread through humanity on any street you go to.

My first car was a little white Volkswagen City Golf. They've just been discontinued in South Africa, but they were the staple first car for most of my peer group. It's the most entry-level four-door four-seater that Volkswagen ever made. I named him Doug. I don't know why.

Absolutely anything that you potentially stand to be as a human being stems from nutrition, end of story.

It's to be a person who's able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to peace.

There was never a great man who had not a great mother.

I've wanted to be an actor since I was 6 years old. I was literally picked off the streets of Paris... while I was modeling there. I was asked to audition for Oliver Stone's 'Alexander.' I didn't get the part, but that led to commercials and roles in South Africa.

Apartheid - both petty and grand - is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.

AIDS is the biggest challenge, the major disaster facing this country and we would have wished for something more specific and far-reaching.

I used to think you should only exfoliate once a week, but Liv Tyler told me, 'You have to exfoliate every day!' So I've been following her advice, and it works.

'Postmates' will provide you with any food you can imagine - delivered. Frozen yogurt craving? Need coffee and no time to run? Last minute dinner guests and no food in the house? They take care of it all. Easy and awesome. I'm a fan.

If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

If you are bitter, you are like a dry leaf that you can just squash, and you can get blown away by the wind. There is much more wisdom in forgiveness.

The best works do not necessarily get to auction. I like to draw, so maybe I give you a little drawing. And then eventually it ends up at auction. And then critics say, 'Oh, that's a bad drawing!' Well, I didn't say it was so wonderful.

And the basis on which we agreed to operate with them involved a manifesto, where it states that we proceed from different ideologies and policies. One thing that we insisted on was that they should take an oath to reject racism and discrimination.

I'd rather have happiness than money. People ask for it. Sometimes when I don't have it. I make other people's problems my problem because they want me to; they ask me to.

Diamonds are a key component in the campaign to make poverty history.

There's something amazing about 'Fawlty Towers' and 'The Office' only being two series. I think, when you really nail it, you don't need to do more than two or three.

I remain your servant and I will do as you ask of me.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

In the early '90s, I was hired to write educational dramas about HIV and AIDS in the shantytowns. I did that for two and a half years, and then I was hired on other films. When 'Tsotsi' presented itself, I thought, 'This is not a world I grew up in, but I've spent a great deal of time writing about it and researching it in my past.'

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.

Playing from deep grass is a fact of life in professional golf.

I'm always trying to find a pair of flats that will go with most everything.

I'm pretty sure my mom is the only person on the planet who thinks that she got cancer so that I could find my calling in life, but as I started to build this company, all my years of useless education, random jobs, and weird interests merged into this serendipitous moment.

You never know what battles people fight.

Ethics, politics and psychology are all far more difficult to understand now that we know the depths to which human nature can sink.

The revolutionary sees his task as liberation not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor. Happiness can never truly exist in a state of tension.

I'm a good listener.

I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.

We hope that there will be better policy-making and hope to see projects implemented. We have lots of information that can be used for the implementation of projects.

As soon as you have an average game, everyone is quick to criticise and say, 'You suck; you shouldn't be playing rugby.'

Second guesses in putting are fatal.

We all say we enjoy playing rugby, but most guys don't really show it - and some guys I don't think actually enjoy it. So every time I arrive in the morning, I've always got a smile on my face. Once I lose that enjoyment, I will stop playing.

Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it happens to run.

I'm extremely positive about investment in Africa. Africa has a wonderful climate, wonderful people, and amazing possibilities. Africa has been called dark and hopeless, but today it is neither of these. Africa is awakening. It's a huge market of almost a billion people with huge resources and a young population. It's the best place to invest.

We do, and there is a law in the United States - the Torture Convention - that prohibits the United States from deporting an individual to a country where there is a reasonable expectation that he will be subjected to torture - physical, mental or otherwise.

I just want my daughter to grow up in a society where she feels accepted being South African, German and Ukrainian.

I'm not clever. But I am level-headed, hard-working, dogged.

It's the gap in the teeth. My friends say I look like Shrek - some of my friends - and you can't choose your friends, so what can I say?

Changing public perceptions is important. Nobody bats an eyelid in a team sport when a player gets injured and is still getting paid. In tennis, there is nothing like that.

We think we control our environment, but in fact, it's our environment that controls us. We can't change the world. The only thing we can change is ourselves, by trying to get a better understanding of our own messed-up wiring.

Over two billion people in China and India need commodities to grow their economies and improve their living standards.