Quett Masire

"In a democracy like ours, elections belong to citizens, not the government and its institutions. Government institutions conduct elections on behalf of the people."

"We used to say to our donors, ‘help us to help ourselves, and the more you help us, the sooner you will get rid of us"

"We, the young people, wished to see Batswana acting as a country at the end of the colonial era, not as tribes. This is what caused two colleagues and I to want to start a paper [in 1954]. It was not money, or politics. We were reading African Advisory Council minutes and seeing that the Chiefs wanted to be big fish in small ponds."

"The old order must give way before it corrupted the new"

"Bad governance doesn’t just undermine service delivery, it retards development, and it also drives violence"

"Corruption imposes heavy costs on the country and distorts development policies. It hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development. It undermines government’s ability to provide essential services. It fuels inequality and injustice and discourages foreign investment"

"Even as we have differed among ourselves over the course of 11 general elections, we have, nonetheless, continued to travel together towards our common destiny. I pray that that which divides us as Batswana will, therefore, continue to be less than that which joins us as a nation that is proudly united in its diversity. In this way, our differences of political perspective will remain a source of our governing strength."

"A revolution happens when you lose confidence in a government and there is no alternative"

"We are hurting. Gomolemo was my friend. As a consequence of that friendship, some in my party [The ruling Botswana Democratic Party] suspected I was also a member of his party [the Botswana Movement for Democracy] The Lord gave and Lord has taken."