Frederik Willem de Klerk famous quotes

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

#Educational #Ignorance #Reign

Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign
-- Frederik Willem de Klerk

#Doe #Reign #Poverty

If I look back, the one thing that I am proud of is that for once I as a political leader, kept every promise I made within one term of office. We achieved a new constitution; we achieved a new bill of rights, which encapsulated this vision of justice for all.
-- Frederik Willem de Klerk

#Justice #Office #Leader

What I supported when I was a young man, was that the solution to bring justice to all in South Africa, was to build a little Europe there. Was to create so many nation states as there are actual nations, each with their own cultures, each with their own languages, that is what separate development tried and wanted to achieve.
-- Frederik Willem de Klerk

#Men #Justice #Culture

Race is not the only differential in South Africa, in the new South Africa, where all schools are open, mother-tongue education is a very big issue. One of the main reasons why the dropout figure of black students, and the lower pass rate of black students in the present education system, and it was like that before, was that we didn't have mother-tongue education.
-- Frederik Willem de Klerk

#School #Black #Students

Sanctions kept us on our toes, it made us realize that we were drifting into a situation of growing isolation so I wouldn't go as far as to say sanctions didn't play a role but if I were to put on a scale, the issues of conscience played a much greater role than the sanctions. We could have withstood sanctions for many more years. We became experts in circumventing sanctions... So sanctions played a role but it wasn't the major role.
-- Frederik Willem de Klerk

#Realizing #Isolation #Drifting

From the time I entered cabinet, the emphasis was on reforms, but reforms which did not abolish separate development, but reforms which were aimed at changing the very, very dehumanising aspects. Giving greater freedom of movement, giving private property ownership within so-called white South Africa also to blacks. Abolishing the concept of job reservation on the basis of race and colour. Allowing free organisation for trade unions, also black trade unions.
-- Frederik Willem de Klerk

#Giving #Black #Ownership

Fifteen years after the new dispensations started in South Africa, if one looks back, there are reasons to be positive and say we have achieved what we wanted to achieve, but there are also reasons for concern. Not everything turned out exactly as I would have liked it to turn out. On the positive side, we have a good constitution, there has been no effort to really amend the constitution and change the values and the principles contained therein and in our bill of rights.
-- Frederik Willem de Klerk

#Effort #Being Positive #Constitution

When we, through our educational culture, through the media, through the entertainment culture, give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions, we are telling them, in effect, that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future.

Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved.

The purely righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.

It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real an immediate cause.

The king reigns but does not govern.

The devil, my friends, is a woman just now. 'Tis a woman that reigns in Hell.

The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.