“To be free is to not merely cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“the wealthiest and most popular boy at the circumcision school.”
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Nelson Mandela
“He did not need to be ordained, for the traditional religion of the Xhosas is characterized by a cosmic wholeness, so that there is little distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the natural and the supernatural.”
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Nelson Mandela
“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It is not my ambition to marry a white woman or swim in a white pool. It is political equality that we want.”
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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
“One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”
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Nelson Mandela
“We do not want freedom without bread, nor do we want bread without freedom.
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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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Of course you cannot know a man completely, his character, his principles, sense of judgement, not till he’s shown his colors, run the people, making laws. Experience, there’s the test.”
―
Nelson Mandela
