“It was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity.”
―
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
“It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Having resentment against someone is like drinking poison and thinking it will kill your enemy.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Politics can be strengthened by music, but music has a potency that defies politics.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“A man is not a man until he has a house of his own.”
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Nelson Mandela
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
―
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
“Violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid.”
―
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
“Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.”
―
Nelson Mandela
