“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”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Although Verwoerd thought Africans were lower than animals, his death did not yield us any pleasure. Political assassination is not something I or the ANC ever supported. It is a primitive way of contending with an opponent”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.”
―
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
“Having resentment against someone is like drinking poison and thinking it will kill your enemy.”
―
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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I do not deny, however, that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the Whites.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Lead from the front — but don t leave your base behind.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I was a young man who attempted to make up for his ignorance with militancy.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”
―
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
