Top 689 Quotes & Sayings by Nelson Mandela
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a South African statesman Nelson Mandela.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.
I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.
Money won't create success, the freedom to make it will.
I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.
A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.
I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.
I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.
There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.
People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that's how they'll react. But if you say, 'We want peace, we want stability,' we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.
I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.
Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.
To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.
Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
Even if you have a terminal disease, you don't have to sit down and mope. Enjoy life and challenge the illness that you have.
I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.
In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it's very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.
Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.
As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.
Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
Forget the past.
There is no such thing as part freedom.
If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one's person.
I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.
I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot.
No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.
Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?
I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car, and I wore a chauffeur's cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master's car.
I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.
Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.
Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.
Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.
I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.
Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.
Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.
Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.
When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.
It always seems impossible until it's done.
If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.
Give a child love, laughter and peace, not AIDS.
Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.
Related Authors
Angela Merkel Quotes
German
Statesman
Bashar al-Assad Quotes
Syrian
Statesman
Colin Powell Quotes
American
Statesman
Condoleezza Rice Quotes
American
Statesman
Edmund Burke Quotes
Irish
Statesman
Fidel Castro Quotes
Cuban
Statesman
Francois Hollande Quotes
French
Statesman
Indira Gandhi Quotes
Indian
Statesman
Kofi Annan Quotes
Ghanaian
Statesman
Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes
Roman
Statesman
Madeleine Albright Quotes
American
Statesman
Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes
Roman
Statesman
Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes
French
Statesman
Thabo Mbeki Quotes
South African
Statesman
Tony Blair Quotes
English
Statesman
Winston Churchill Quotes
British
Statesman