That human beings are selfish. I don’t believe it. We have angels and monsters inside each of us. What we need to do better as a society is create systems and opportunities to bring out our most generous.

And I say, “Every single dollar that was spent on the space program, went into the pockets of the individuals who worked on it: the contractors, the subcontractors, the vendors. It went to feed their children, put clothes on their back, send them to school.…If we are going to be the leaders of the world, and we are going to worry about trade balance, if we are going to worry about military systems, or solving the problems of the environment, we are going to have to continue to spend money on research, medical research as well.

That everyone understood and respected the food pyramid, the way it all works. Good food doesn’t come cheap. You know, there’s a lot of heart and soul and care that goes in producing as well as cooking. So I’d give a little bit more love to farmers.

If I were a religious person, my first question would be "Where the hell is God?" But I never expected him to be on the job.

I think of two great personalities who were locked up in the prison where we’ve now built the Constitutional Court: Gandhi and Mandela.

The one is, to me, the question of conscience is number one. It comes before food. You can survive on almost anything, but your dignity depends on your conscience.

I’d say, “I’m going to be a doctor.” I don’t know why I changed. I know my dad had something to do with it.

We haven’t crossed the frontier of unemployment, of poverty, of dispossession, of landlessness, of homelessness, of lack of access to health, to education, all those different things. We just have to keep going steadily, steadily, to plan well, to involve the people and not simply deliver things from the top and hope that people will be grateful, and get upset when they’re not grateful.

I want to make a movie. I’ve got a very strong movie in my head. And I’ve spoken to some movie people and I’ve said, “If you say it’s no go, I’ll drop it.” They said — two different people — “Do the script.” So I’m encouraged enough to do that.

I would love to see more joy and fun and laughter and dance and expressiveness. People are very timid.