A Quote by Nelson Mandela

The impression that you are a demigod worried me. I wanted to be like an ordinary human being with virtues and vices.

Nelson Mandela

Quote Topics

Being Human Human Being Impression Like Me Ordinary Vices Virtues Wanted Worried

Quote Author

Nelson Mandela
South African - Statesman
July 18, 1918 - December 5, 2013

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Pride is the king of vices...it is the first of the pallbearers of the soul...other vices destroy only their opposite virtues, as wantonness destroys chastity; greed destroys temperance; anger destroys gentleness; but pride destroys all virtues.

Fulton J. Sheen

If a man has no vices, he is in great danger of making vices about his virtues, and there's a spectacle.

Thornton Wilder

The audience will make you feel like a demigod. But when you leave the stage, get back to being human.

David Coverdale

I found at this point that effective acting wasn't what I wanted to do, that I didn't want to make effects, that I wanted, as it were, to leave an impression of a particular kind of human being.

Paul Scofield

Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.

Alec Guinness

My experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has damned few virtues.

Abraham Lincoln

The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.

Yukio Mishima

Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.

R. H. Tawney

His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.

Orson Scott Card

There has never been, and never again will be a human being like you. There is nothing ordinary about you. If you feel ordinary, it is because you have chosen to hide the extraordinary parts of yourself from the world.

Barbara De Angelis

'You hate America, don't you?' 'That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.'

Kurt Vonnegut

That was one of the things that worried me – to be raised to the position of a semi-god – because then you are no longer a human being. I wanted to be known as Mandela, a man with weaknesses, some of which are fundamental, and a man who is committed, but never the less, sometimes he fails to live up to expectations.

Nelson Mandela

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.