“los padres raramente conocen el lado romántico de la vida de sus hijos.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“LIFE IN ALEXANDRA was exhilarating and precarious. Its atmosphere was alive, its spirit adventurous, its people resourceful. Although the township did boast some handsome buildings, it could fairly be described as a slum, living testimony to the neglect of the authorities. The roads were unpaved and dirty, and filled with hungry, undernourished children scampering around half-naked. The air was thick with the smoke from coal fires in tin braziers and stoves. A single water tap served several houses. Pools of stinking, stagnant water full of maggots collected by the side of the road. Alexandra was known as “Dark City” for its complete absence of electricity. Walking home at night was perilous, for there were no lights, the silence pierced by yells, laughter, and occasional gunfire. So different from the darkness of the Transkei, which seemed to envelop one in a welcome embrace.”
―
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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It was ANC policy to try to educate all people, even our enemies: we believed that all men, even prison service warders, were capable of change, and we did our utmost to try to sway them.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Courage is not the absence of fear — it s inspiring others to move beyond it.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great, you can be that generation”
―
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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“If wealth is a magnet, poverty is a kind of repellent.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Prison is a still point in a turning world, and it is very easy to remain in the same place in jail while the world moves on.”
―
Nelson Mandela
As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be known for years to come.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It is music and dancing that make me at peace with the world.”
―
Nelson Mandela
