Mandela

Reading this interview with former president Bill Clinton [part1, part2](via Metafilter) , the following portion stuck out (on meeting Mandela):

I said that, ‘Now, come on, when you got to walk out of prison the last time, didn’t you hate all those people all over again?’

He said, ‘I did, briefly. But when I was walking to freedom, the last steps, I realised that they already had me for 27 years and if I hated them when I got out the door, they would still have me and I wanted to be free, so I let it go.

Clinton calls Mandela ‘a treasure of the earth’, something I can only agree with. What would Thatcher think now?