“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”
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Nelson Mandela
“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”
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Nelson Mandela
“We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.”
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Nelson Mandela
“A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it's lowest ones”
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Nelson Mandela
“I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there was mercy and generosity.”
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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
“A blind pursuit of cheap popularity has nothing to do with revolution."
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Nelson Mandela
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion … if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.”
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Nelson Mandela
“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”
―
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
“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."
"Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."
"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.
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Nelson Mandela
“To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.”
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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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
