“I am what I am.........both as a result of people who respected me and helped me, and of those who did not respect me and treated me badly.
Nelson Mandela”
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Nelson Mandela
“ When you are young and strong...you can stay alive on your hatred"....but realized later "They can take everything from me except my mind and heart"
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Nelson Mandela
“Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”
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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
“Ik heb altijd gevonden dat lichaamsbeweging niet alleen de sleutel is tot fysieke gezondheid, maar ook tot gemoedsrust. [...] Lichaamsbeweging verdrijft spanning en spanning is de vijand van sereniteit.”
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Nelson Mandela
“In another conversation I said, ‘Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn’t you hate them all over again?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely I did, because they’d imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn’t get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and apsirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry or savour their songs. I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.”
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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
“I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE AND THE CAPTAIN OF MY DESTINY.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Crime must be brought under control... Freedom without civility, freedom without the ability to live in peace, was not true freedom at all.”
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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
“grievance into a succinct and pithy phrase, while mobilizing the people to combat it. Our slogan”
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Nelson Mandela