“I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things. Those things I still had control over. And I decided not to give them away.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“In my country we go to prison first and then become President. ”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“We do not want freedom without bread, nor do we want bread without freedom.
―
Nelson Mandela
“Violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture. Africans of my generation—and even today—generally have both an English and an African name. Whites were either unable or unwilling to pronounce an African name, and considered it uncivilized to have one. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“He nodded for us to rise. I tried to catch his eye, but he was not even looking in our direction. His eyes were focused on the middle distance. His face was very pale, and he was breathing heavily. We looked at each other and seemed to know: it would be death, otherwise why was this normally calm man so nervous? And then he began to speak.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Lead from the back and let others believe they are in front.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“But I had little knowledge of Marxism, and in political discussions with my communist friends I found myself handicapped by my ignorance of their philosophy. I decided to remedy this.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
―
Nelson Mandela
