"I learned my lesson one day from an unruly donkey. We had been taking turns climbing up and down its back and when my chance came I jumped on and the donkey boiled into a nearby townbush. It bent its head, trying to unseat me, which it did, but not before the torns had pricked me and scratched my face, embarassing me in front of my friends. Like the people of the East, Africans have a highly developed sense of dignity, or what the Chinese call 'face'. I had lost face among my friends. Even though it was a donkey that unseated me, I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessairily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them."
Nelson Mandela, em Long Walk to Freedom.