Nine of the best Nelson Mandela quotes

South Africa will this week commemorate the life and teachings of its former president Nelson Mandela as the country marks what would have been the anti-apartheid leader’s 100th birthday on Wednesday.

Mandela is widely considered one of the most significant figures of the 20th and 21st centuries, says Forbes.

“Few people have had as much impact on history as Madiba had,” adds the magazine, referring to his clan name. “History will remember him as one of the greatest men who ever lived - an incredibly selfless man who made so much of a sacrifice to re-write the history of generations of South Africans and the world.”

He died in 2013 at the age of 95 having spent many of his later years in Qunu, the impoverished village where he grew up, The Guardian says.

Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment by South Africa’s former white-minority regime in 1964 for conspiring to overthrow the government, before his subsequent release in 1990 and eventual election in 1994 as the country’s first democratic president.

The ceremonies this week will be anchored by a flagship speech by former US president Barack Obama in Johannesburg and an outpouring of memories and tributes to the late leader.

Click on the gallery above for some of the beloved statesman’s finest quotes.