Nelson Mandela in 2009. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

President Obama called Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela who died today at age 95, “one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth.”

“He no longer belongs to us,” Obama continued in a statement from the White House. “He belongs to the ages.”

Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa and moved all of us. His journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings and countries can change for the better.

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We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again, so it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set — to make decisions guided not by hate but by love, never discount the difference that one person can make, to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.

For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived, a man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice. May God bless his memory and keep him in peace.

Mandela’s death was announced this afternoon by South African President Jacob Zuma on state TV. “He is now resting. He is now at peace,” Zuma said. “Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father.”

In June of this year, Obama and his family visited the cell where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars. The president penned the foreword to Mandela’s 2010 book of letters, Conversations With Myself.

There are moments when the kindness, and generosity, and wisdom of the man shines through. Those are the moments when I am reminded that underneath the history that has been made, there is a human being who chose hope over fear — progress over the prisons of the past.”