All Quotes

"South Africans must stop consuming only. We need to get into the habit of making things as a country"

"By then there was already a cooperation agreement signed by Mr Mochoboroane and the contractor for the solar project. It is something that I inherited. The project was one of the major projects which would be financed through loans from the China EXIM Bank under the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)."

"Other projects to be funded by the Chinese include the construction of the Mpiti-Sehlabathebe Road, the Maseru Hospital and Eye Clinic (to replace Queen Elizabeth II Hospital) and the Hlotse multi-purpose dam."

"The claims in your newspaper that I received bribes for this project are false. It is also not true what has been claimed in your newspaper that the project was agreed at my insistence despite opposition by then Chinese Ambassador to Lesotho, Sun Xinghua, who allegedly warned that the project was too expensive. However, it is surprising that your paper doesn’t say anything about Lesotho’s ambassador to China, Lebohang Ntšinyi, because she was the contact between Lesotho and China."

"In fact, I and officials from other ministries even went on site visits to see the projects being done by the contractor, Sinoma Tbea in China. My visits to China would not have happened if he was against the project as claimed in your story last week."

"It's always good to revisit the past — to know where we are today."

"I grew up in a condition where I could have chosen to go either way — negatively or postively — and so I kind of chose to go positive — and that stayed with me through my life — always have to have a positive outlook on whatever situation there is — and so it comes out in my music."

"Our concept of when someone cross over — we don't say they "pass away", we say "cross over", they just go to the other side of existence, there's no such thing as death — and then they go out there and they vibrate for however many days before they go to a higher height. But Toots, the way Toots lived his life, I'm sure his soul got to move on. The soul can reincarnate from 24 to 24,000 times, it depends how you lived your life. But with Toots, I can't see Toots coming back to this planet. He's evolved. He's completed his task that he has to do on this planet. His spirit will always be resonating with us … His soul will always be resonating with us and the people who loved his music."

"Many rivers to cross But I can't seem to find my way over Wandering I am lost As I travel along the white cliffs of Dover"

"Many rivers to cross And it's only my will that keeps me alive I've been licked, washed up for years And I merely survive because of my pride"

"And this loneliness won't leave me alone It's such a drag to be on your own My woman left me and she didn't say why Well I guess, I have to cry"

"Wonderful world, beautiful people You and your girl, things could be pretty But underneath this there is a secret That nobody can reveal"

"Take a look at the world And the state that it's in today I am sure you'll agree We all could make it a better way With our love put together Everybody learn to love each other Instead of fussing and fighting Cheating but biting Scandalizing and hating"

"Man and woman, girl and boy Let us try to give a helping hand This I know and I'm sure That with love we all could understand This is our world, can't you see Everybody wants to live and be free"

"You can get it if you really want But you must try, try and try Try and try, you'll succeed at lastLook here Persecution you must bear Win or lose you've got to get your share Got your mind set on a dream You can get it, though harder they seem nowYou can get it if you really want"

"I come from a Celtic background—Irish, English and Welsh—so I was surely bound to be a music lover! I was influenced by my father, a well-educated pianist and singer as well as a writer and lover of poetry. He’d come home in the evening and play the piano and sing, and from the time I was very small, he would read poetry to me in the evenings as well as sing me lullabies. That was a beautiful thing for my ear. My mother died just prior to my eighth birthday, so that affected my life. I attended Loreto Normanhurst in Sydney from Grade 6 to Form 5, which was a formative period of my life, especially when it comes to music, education and my call to religious life."

"My faith was nurtured by the nuns’ witness to Jesus and their authenticity. Boarding school life was, besides being a lot of fun, an oblique way of observing the religious life of a nun. Each morning we attended 7am Mass with the sisters, and shared evening prayer, which always included a hearty singing of a hymn with them in the chapel. I don’t know how many hundreds of hymns I would’ve sung at school! I came in time to think about the words of these hymns, particularly where children and young people are concerned. This set me up to be a careful composer of words as well as melodies for hymns. I remember, too, the spiritual formation we received through processions. One such was the feast of Corpus Christi where the local parishes joined us annually in the grounds of Loreto Normanhurst to process in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. It was a ritual that informed my interest in liturgical ceremony."

"My violin and piano teacher, Mother Lua Byrne ibvm, was a great influence. She was a very fresh-faced, smiling woman, intelligent and kind, and drew the best out of her students. She always had that sense of loving what she was doing, and she loved us. So it made a big difference to a small child to have such a beautiful woman as my music teacher.She brought my gifts out of me in a great way so that by the time I finished school, I was leading the school orchestra, I was music captain, and I was carrying the two instruments of piano and violin at the top levels. She’d prepared me well for performance studies at Sydney Conservatorium in 1953. It looked as if that would set me out on a career in music and I was happy for that. She introduced me to ethnomusicology in Form 5, and it became a life-long interest for me, with implications for pursuing the connections between music, spirituality, liturgy and culture."

"I had a friend called Joan MacKerras, the sister of the famous international musician and conductor Sir Charles MacKerras (deceased). Even though she didn’t attend the school, Joan received lessons from this ‘famous’ Mother Lua. So one of my favourite pieces, even to this day, is the Bach Double Violin Concerto in D minor, which the two of us would play. The way Bach’s written it, particularly the second movement, is like a conversation between two violins. I love that piece, and I saw it later as God and the soul and this reciprocal relationship going on between the two of us. What’s God saying to me? What am I saying to God? I often return to it in retreat periods. It speaks profoundly to me of the God who is Love calling me to respond in love."

"Despite the fascination of a life in music, particularly as an orchestral player, I felt a deeper call to religious life. During my boarding school years, as mystifying as the sisters’ vocation seemed to me as a child, it presented as a very worthwhile way to live a fulfilled and spiritual life. Prayers that I had come to pray regularly, which were significant in my decision, included the ‘Peace Prayer of St Francis’ and the ‘Prayer of St Ignatius for Generosity’. I chose to follow Jesus in loving service along the path of Mary Ward’s Loreto sisters—to take up the opportunity to be with people who have shared the same faith, who cared and wanted to give their life for others. It seemed a generous thing to do. And in that generous movement, you felt there was love born in you at that time for what you were going to do, following the steps of Jesus, and believing strongly in the value of this way of life."

"I wasn’t quite 18 years old when I joined the Novitiate in Ballarat. In 1957, my first mission was teaching in a kindergarten in Brisbane. I taught nearly everything through the piano, including numbers and religion—the children loved it! After eight years in the Order teaching primary and lower secondary students in a range of subjects, I entered the Bachelor of Music course at the University of Melbourne, transferring from performance to a specialisation in music education, including a year of a Diploma of Education. My time in Melbourne was extremely rich and formative. The illustrious priest musician Dr Percy Jones was one of my lecturers, a highly prominent international figure in church music. He invited me later to turn my hand to writing music in a folk style, and that’s how some of my music came to be published. My time at the Melbourne Conservatorium prepared me well for a return to Loreto Normanhurst Sydney in 1964 to become Director of Music, which lasted 10 years."

"By 1974, I was missioned to Loreto College, Brisbane, in leadership and administration. During this time, I learnt and experienced the richness of parish community and liturgical prayer. I travelled to London to take up postgraduate studies in music at the Institute of Education London University, which opened me to a wider experience in both the academic and performance fields. I specialised in choral and orchestral conducting in summer programs, attended festivals, and set up field trips to places of excellence in liturgy and music in England, France, Italy and Spain—all to widen my knowledge and cultural experience. In 1983–84, I undertook a Masters in Liturgical Studies in Washington DC with a special interest in music. This program set me up to find how ritual and music can complement one another in a profound way, as well as giving me the history and foundations of liturgical and sacramental theology. It was truly enriching."

"On my return to Australia in 1985, a 12-year period of teaching in two institutions commenced—Mercy Teachers’ College (later Australian Catholic University) and Yarra Theological Union. In both, I wrote my own courses ranging across philosophy of music, 20th-century history, liturgy and music, with a particular interest in Australian music, spirituality and culture. I was particularly fortunate to work alongside the founder of the only Bachelor of Church Music course available in Australia at the time, the internationally acclaimed Melbourne musician Roger Heagney."

"A key formative period in my musical life in the Church of Melbourne came in 1988 with the invitation to join the Office for Worship team. This place was truly a centre of vitality, learning, collaboration and pastoral leadership, headed at the time by this incredibly erudite liturgist, professor, spiritual director and pastoral human being, Fr Frank O’Loughlin. He provided leadership through first-class theological input into parishes and assisting with resources to meet their pastoral needs. Margaret Smith SGS, liturgist extraordinaire, partnered me in visiting local parishes, providing workshops on the revised rites of the church and the liturgical seasons."

"In 2005 I accepted the invitation to be the writer of our revised modern Constitution Volume 11 for the Loreto sisters worldwide. With such a ministry, there was not much time for music, but I found composing poetic prose a music of its own kind. The style of the document was challenging in that it was to be of spiritual inspiration as well as legally accurate. There is an important line in that document: ‘Mission is at the heart of who we are, and love is the driving force that urges us on.’ So, to answer your question, I think it’s love. The love of education, of seeing people—young and old—grow. My life has been not one of being tucked away in a convent, but very much associated with people beyond. And what brings it together is my faith, and my music."

"It’s very simple. It speaks to people, because it’s about God’s love for each of us—I have loved you with an everlasting love, I will never forsake you, there is no need to fear. It comes directly out of my going to confession to a priest, and he said, ‘I don’t think God is worrying about half of that. Come as you are.’ People use the song everywhere, including in prisons. It’s extraordinary the amount of correspondence I’ve received over the years. People don’t think I’ve done anything else!"

"You are known for having written and composed the song ‘Come as you are’. What is the back story to this song?"

"As the years advance and my energies fade, I still love to be involved in whatever way I can in supporting and encouraging younger people to follow through their dreams. I have eclectic tastes, a deep love of words and music, and love of my way of life—a vocation of loving service in companionship and faith. It’s not so much what I do now; it’s what kind of a person am I in the doing. I wrote a line in the Loreto Modern Spiritual document that says, ‘When energy fails, the ministry of being is as authentic as the ministry of doing.’"

"It’s a time for gathering in and sorting what may be useful to others from my store of life experience—the failures and uncertainties, the lost opportunities, and the glorious moments. I’m happy that I am still able to do something, and that something is to share my love of music and my love of my way of life and faith. Mary Ward was an extraordinary person, and some of her quotes were so impressive, but one of them is ‘Women in time to come will do much.’ And we live with that responsibility to use our gifts to the full in whatever way we can."

"There is a duality to South Africa, as in all of life itself, that is evident, and as stark as the inequality among its citizens"

"Then I close my eyes, and I imagine a world where I sabi and you sabi that we are okay, as we are"

"Perhaps all South Africans need to embrace the mirror of yesteryear, and fear it not, for it holds the answers to the questions that we seek today. Questions that, if left unanswered, will still be asked by generations yet to come.”"

"In the stillness the voice inside is louder, much louder, and cannot be ignored"

"Our stories are important and need to be told"

"If there is a pure space inside of us that can access the eternal source, and give rise to great acts of kindness, create masterpiece artworks, inspire life changing technology, and drive a man to risk his life to save a woman and her baby in a flood, where then does that space exist inside us that gives rise to great acts of horror and pain?"

"It’s not about age, that’s why when you read the books written by King Solomon, you will know that he was asked, ‘what do you want?"

"Since 1995 up to now, there is no corruption attributed to the name of Nandi-Ndaitwah. That tells you a story about the character of that individual. That tells you that within the formulation of her DNA, there is a value system that she herself subscribes to and she has done politics with principles."

"They said she was out and never coming back because those who supported a certain candidate (at the 2004 extraordinary congress) were made strategically to fall down the list. To be 54, it was a tall order because at the time we had a chamber of 72 seats."

"So, it’s not a coincidence that today the leader should be her. Some things are designed and God uses us as instruments to propel what he has given to us. This is a time for women, this is a time of meme and this will be her time."

"She will come and cure us from that corruption because she is not corrupt. She has proven this over and above."

"Such biological nonsense should not play a role in politics. Wisdom is not a matter of age. And when it comes with age (as it does occasionally), it is a reason to retire from political responsibility to become an elder who advises."

"The agents advised that allegations had been leveled against me to the effect that on 25 November 2014 I held an official meeting at the Pavillion, Fairgrounds with a representative from Vecto Petroleum. The allegations further said that the purpose of the meeting was to source fuel for the Botswana Government/Botswana Oil. My intention was to use my position to procure Government fuel through my company Petro Lilac, therefore gaining unfairly."

"My response to the allegations was that they were ‘not true’. I have at no stage been a representative of the Botswana Government/Botswana Oil in procuring fuel. I am neither a member of Botswana Oil Board of Directors nor do I belong to any of Botswana Oil procurement structures. Admittedly, I work for the Ministry of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources but my line of duty is far remote to fuel procurement."

"We were associates, maybe not friends. Our association resulted with, among other things, jointly forming Petro Lilac. Sometimes in mid-2014 our relationship soured and we went our separate ways."

"Between June/July 2014 and January 2015, I did not hear from Reatile and the reverse is the same. I remember at some point (around August 2014) he made efforts to reach me through cell phone calls but I ignored his calls. I could not therefore have been involved in an oil deal with two gentlemen, one of whom I did not know personally and had never met and the other one, I had neither met, made contact with or any form of communication for almost half a year."

"I advised that I was available and they could come. The following day the meeting was arranged at The Pavillion. It was attended by my relative in the company of two gentlemen, a white man and a black man. We exchanged greetings, with the white man giving me a business card. The name of the white man was Richard Venn and the company on the business card was Vecto Petroleum."

"Their responsibilities will include carrying out a business, financial and human resource assessment of BMC, valuation of BMC and submitting a comprehensive project completion report at the end of the project."

"Their concerns and suggestions were duly noted and taken onboard because it is government’s commitment to ensuring that privatisation is fair, transparent and in the best interests of Batswana."

"Key initiatives include establishing autonomous management structures to strengthen institutional efficiency, reforming procurement laws to enhance flexibility and affordability as well as introducing legislation to enable the timely disposal of expired health products."

"The situation had reached alarming levels, so we made the call to declare an emergency because our people were suffering. We cannot run a health system without medicines."