“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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“if you talk to a man in a second language , your talking to his brain ,if you talk to him in his mother language you're talking to his heart -”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Although few people will remember 3 June 1993, it was a landmark in South African history. On that day, after months of negotiations at the World Trade Centre, the multiparty forum voted to set a date for the country’s first national, nonracial, one-person-one-vote election: 27 April 1994. For the first time in South African history, the black majority would go to the polls to elect their own leaders.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one’s grip and even one’s sanity.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It is a simple tale, but its message is an enduring one: virtue and generosity will be rewarded in ways that one cannot know.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“before either of us knew it, we were in the same room and in each other’s arms. I kissed and held my wife for the first time in all these many years. It was a moment I had dreamed about a thousand times. It was as if I were still dreaming. I held her to me for what seemed like an eternity. We were still and silent except for the sound of our hearts. I did not want to let go of her at all, but I broke free and embraced my daughter and then took her child into my lap. It had been twenty-one years since I had even touched my wife’s hand.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Africans were desperate for legal help in government buildings: it was a crime to walk through a Whites Only door, a crime to ride a Whites Only bus, a crime to use a Whites Only drinking fountain, a crime to walk on a Whites Only beach, a crime to be on the streets after 11 p.m., a crime not to have a pass book and a crime to have the wrong signature in that book, a crime to be unemployed and a crime to be employed in the wrong place, a crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“A man is not a man until he has a house of his own.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“A blind pursuit of cheap popularity has nothing to do with revolution."
―
Nelson Mandela
“Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport.”
―
Nelson Mandela
