“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”
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Nelson Mandela
“No one i born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality--all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.”
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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.”
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Nelson Mandela
“He did not need to be ordained, for the traditional religion of the Xhosas is characterized by a cosmic wholeness, so that there is little distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the natural and the supernatural.”
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Nelson Mandela
“For to be free is not merely to 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
“You will achieve more in this world through acts of mercy than you will through acts of retribution.”
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Nelson Mandela
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”
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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
“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
“Niente come tornare in un luogo rimasto immutato
ci fa scoprire quanto siamo cambiati...”
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Nelson Mandela
“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Lead from the back and let others believe they are in front.”
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Nelson Mandela
“The arbitrary and meaningless tests to decide black from Coloured or Coloured from white often resulted in tragic cases where members of the same family were classified differently, all depending on whether one child had a lighter or darker complexion. Where one was allowed to live and work could rest on such absurd distinctions as the curl of one’s hair or the size of one’s lips.”
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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