“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
“ When you are young and strong...you can stay alive on your hatred"....but realized later "They can take everything from me except my mind and heart"
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Nelson Mandela
“One day, I was on the front lawn of the property and aimed the gun at a sparrow perched high in a tree. Hazel Goldreich, Arthur's wife, was watching me and jokingly remarked that I would never hit the target. But she had hardly finished the sentence when the sparrow fell to the ground. I turned to her and was about to boast, when the Goldreichs' son Paul, then about five years old, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, "David, why did you kill that bird? Its mother will be sad." My mood immediately shifted from one of pride to shame; I felt that this small boy had far more humanity than I did. It was an odd sensation for a man who was the leader of a nascent guerrilla army.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination,” he told the court. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It will forever remain an accusation and a challenge to all men and women of conscience that it took as long as it has, before all of us stood up to say enough is enough.”
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Nelson Mandela
“A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.”
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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
Každý člověk má v životě dvojí závazek - vůči rodině, rodičům, ženě a dětem, ale také vůči národu, komunitě, zemi.”
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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
“There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
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Nelson Mandela
“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.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Later the island was turned into a leper colony, a lunatic asylum, and a naval base. The government had only recently turned the island back into a prison.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Only mass education, he used to say, would free my people, arguing that an educated man could not be oppressed because he could think for himself.”
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Nelson Mandela
“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”
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Nelson Mandela