“Non-violence is a good policy when conditions permit.”
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Nelson Mandela
“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”
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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,”
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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.”
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Nelson Mandela
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.”
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Nelson Mandela
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances freedom to others. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Although few people will remember 3 June 1993, it was a landmark in South African history. On that day, after months of negotiations at the World Trade Centre, the multiparty forum voted to set a date for the country’s first national, nonracial, one-person-one-vote election: 27 April 1994. For the first time in South African history, the black majority would go to the polls to elect their own leaders.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.”
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Nelson Mandela
“after years of imprisonment, physical and emotional abuse, and separation from his family, Mandela said, “I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things. Those things I still had control over. And I decided not to give them away.” So Mandela’s story is really the story of those two things he never gave away: his brilliant mind, and his great heart.”
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Nelson Mandela
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion … if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and 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, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”
―
Nelson Mandela
