“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
“There is little to be said in favour of poverty, but it was often an incubator of true friendship. Many people will appear to befriend you when you are wealthy, but precious few will do the same when you are poor”
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Nelson Mandela
“I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other...The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements.”
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Nelson Mandela
“As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“For a revolution is not just a question of pulling a trigger; its purpose is to create a fair just society”
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Nelson Mandela
“A new world will be won not by those who stand at a distance with their arms folded, but by those who are in the arena, whose garments are torn by storms and whose bodies are maimed in the course of the contest. From a letter to Winnie Mandela,”
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Nelson Mandela
“I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE AND THE CAPTAIN OF MY DESTINY.”
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Nelson Mandela
“What freedom am I being offered while the organization of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts,”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Ma il silenzio amoroso tra una madre e un figlio non è una dimensione solitaria.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great...”
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Nelson Mandela
“Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”
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Nelson Mandela
“One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”
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Nelson Mandela
“But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“No single person can liberate a country. You can only liberate a country if you act as a collective.”
―
Nelson Mandela
