“One subject we hearkened back to again and again was the question of whether there were tigers in Africa.”

Nelson Mandela

“Quitting is leading too.”

Nelson Mandela

“It was ANC policy to try to educate all people, even our enemies: we believed that all men, even prison service warders, were capable of change, and we did our utmost to try to sway them.”

Nelson Mandela

“In another conversation I said, ‘Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn’t you hate them all over again?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely I did, because they’d imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn’t get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go.”

Nelson Mandela

“Once a person is determined to help themselves, there is nothing that can stop them.”

Nelson Mandela

“Don't Judge a person by his success stories, but only with how many times the person stood up, after falling down.”

Nelson Mandela

“He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems.”

Nelson Mandela

“If I preached unity, I must act like a unifier, even at the risk of perhaps alienating some of my own colleagues.”

Nelson Mandela

“It is not where you start but how high you aim that matters for success.”

Nelson Mandela

“A friend of mine once saw Mandela in a South African airport and told me this story. The president had noticed a lady who was walking by with her daughter, a beautiful five- or six-year-old girl, with blond hair and blue eyes. Mandela walked up to this little girl and leaned down and shook her hand, and he said, “Do you know who I am?” And the child smiled and said, “Yes, you are President Mandela.” Mandela said, “Yes, I am your president. And if you work very hard in school and you learn a lot and you are nice to everybody, you too could grow up to be President of South Africa.”

Nelson Mandela

“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”

Nelson Mandela

“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”

Nelson Mandela

“Banning not only confines one physically, it imprisons one's spirit. it induces a kind of psychological claustrophobia that makes one yearn not only for freedom of movement but spiritual escape...This insidious effect of bans was that at a certain point one began to think that the opponent was not without but within.” 

Nelson Mandela

“I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.”

Nelson Mandela

“I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. From a response to an offer of conditional freedom, read by Zindzi Mandela at a rally, Jabulani Stadium, Soweto, South Africa,” 

Nelson Mandela


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