“We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Men have different capacities and react differently to stress. But the stronger ones raised up the weaker ones, and both became stronger in the process.”
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Nelson Mandela
As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be known for years to come.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I wondered--not for the first time--whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one's own family in order to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be anything more important than looking after one's aging mother? Is politics merely a pretext for shirking one's responsibilities, an excuse for not being able to provide in the way one wanted?”
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Nelson Mandela
“It is not my ambition to marry a white woman or swim in a white pool. It is political equality that we want.”
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Nelson Mandela
“In that moment, something stirred deep inside all of us, something strong and intimate, that bound us to one another. In that moment we felt the hand of the great past that made us what we were and the power of the great cause that linked us all together.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Like all Xhosa children, I acquired knowledge mainly through observation. We were meant to learn through imitation and emulation, not through questions. When I first visited the homes of whites, I was often dumbfounded by the number and nature of questions that children asked of their parents—and their parents’ unfailing willingness to answer them. In my household, questions were considered a nuisance; adults imparted information as they considered necessary.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It is most unusual to return to a place that has changed in ways you yourself have altered.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It reaffirmed my long-held belief that education was the enemy of prejudice. These were men and women of science, and science had no room for racism.”
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Nelson Mandela
“If wealth is a magnet, poverty is a kind of repellent.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.”
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Nelson Mandela
“To be free is to not merely cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
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Nelson Mandela
“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.”
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Nelson Mandela
“after years of imprisonment, physical and emotional abuse, and separation from his family, Mandela said, “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.” So Mandela’s story is really the story of those two things he never gave away: his brilliant mind, and his great heart.”
―
Nelson Mandela
