Obama's Charlottesville tweet becomes most liked post of all time

A Twitter post by Barack Obama has become the most-liked tweet of all time.

Just days after the former US president spoke out about the violence in Charlottesville with a powerful Nelson Mandela quote, his tweet had gained more than three million likes.

He followed it up with two other tweets quoting Mandela from his autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom.

Obama's series of three tweets reads: "No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion.

"People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

The first tweet amassed over 1.2 million retweets, while the follow-up second and third posts garnered more than 300,000 retweets each.

Obama's post surpassed Ariana Grande's tweet on May 22 in response to the Manchester terror attack, which read: "Broken. From the bottom of my heart, I am so so sorry. I don't have words".

It attracted 2.71 million likes.

US television host Ellen DeGeneres' Oscars selfie from 2014 is the third most-liked tweet of all time with 2.42 million likes.

Six of the 10 most liked tweets are by Obama from his personal account and his former POTUS handle.

His social media statement was in contrast to Donald Trump's press conference in which the current US President failed to explicitly denounce white supremacists, saying blame lay on both sides.