“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.”
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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
“Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport.”
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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
“He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other...The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Success in politics demands that you must take your people into confidence about your views and state them very clearly, very politely, very calmly, but nevertheless, state them openly.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things. Those things I still had control over. And I decided not to give them away.”
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Nelson Mandela
“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
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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.”
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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."
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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.”
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Nelson Mandela
