“Democracy meant all men were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people. Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be crushed by a majority.”
―
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
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. -Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1918)”
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Nelson Mandela
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
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Nelson Mandela
“The human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirit strong, even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation. Your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.”
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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
“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“If wealth is a magnet, poverty is a kind of repellent.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
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Nelson Mandela
“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Later the island was turned into a leper colony, a lunatic asylum, and a naval base. The government had only recently turned the island back into a prison.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Men, I think, are not capable of doing nothing, of saying nothing, of not reacting to injustice, of not protesting against oppression, of not striving for the good of society and the good life in the ways they see it.”
―
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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”
―
Nelson Mandela
