“The purpose of freedom is to create it for others. Prison desk calendar, written on Robben Island, June 2, 1979”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Peace is the greatest weapon for development that any person can have.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“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
“I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“If I preached unity, I must act like a unifier, even at the risk of perhaps alienating some of my own colleagues.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Don't Judge a person by his success stories, but only with how many times the person stood up, after falling down.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“los padres raramente conocen el lado romántico de la vida de sus hijos.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“What freedom am I being offered while the organization of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts,”
―
Nelson Mandela
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one's birth, whether one acknowledges it or not...His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life...I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, From henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires”
―
Nelson Mandela
