“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Although we had no hope of defeating the enemy in the battlefield, nevertheless, we fought back to keep the idea of liberation alive. From a conversation with Richard Stengel, January 13, 1993”
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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
“لقد هددنا بالانسحاب من السلطة لنسلبهم هيبتهم وصلاحياتهم، ورغم الوساطات التي تدخلت لأجل الحل لم نتراجع، وانتصرنا نتيجة ثباتنا على موقفنا، وكانت تلك من أوائل مواجهاتنا مع السلطة واستشعرت لذة النصر التي يولدها شعور المرء أنه على حق وأن العدالة إلى جانبه”
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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
“Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great, you can be that generation”
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Nelson Mandela
“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.”
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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
“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”
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Nelson Mandela
“- In my country we go to prison first and then become President.”
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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
“Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.”
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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