“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one’s grip and even one’s sanity.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“She married a man who soon left her; that man became a myth; and then that myth returned home and proved to be just a man after all.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I did not have an unlimited library to choose from on Robben Island. We had access to many unremembered mysteries and detective novels and all the works of Daphne du Maurier, but little more.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“los padres raramente conocen el lado romántico de la vida de sus hijos.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life."
―
Nelson Mandela
“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
―
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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“There is a universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings irrespective of their social status.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“If wealth is a magnet, poverty is a kind of repellent.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.”
―
Nelson Mandela
