By Hunter Schwarz, CNN's COVER/LINE

(CNN) -- Former President Barack Obama's tweet reacting to the attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, is one of the biggest ever on the social network.

Obama tweeted a quote from Nelson Mandela's 1994 autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom" Saturday that said, "No one is born hating another person because of the color 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 quote was split into three tweets, the first of which included a photo of him greeting a group of children through a window taken by photographer Pete Souza at a day care facility next to his daughter Sasha's school in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2011.

The tweet has been liked more than 2.5 million times, making it the second-most liked tweet of all time, behind a tweet from Ariana Grande following the attack at her concert in Manchester in May, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to CNN.

Obama's tweet is also now the fifth-most retweeted tweet behind a tweet from a teen who wanted free chicken nuggets from Wendy's, Ellen Degeneres' tweet from 2014 Oscars, a tweet from singer Louis Tomlinson to his One Direction bandmate Harry Styles and Ariana Grande's previously mentioned tweet.