“I remember Mac retorting that hundreds of years ago there was a Hindi word for a craft that flew in the air, long before the airplane was invented, but that did not mean that airplanes existed in ancient India.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“If I had my time over I would do the same again, so would any man who dares call himself a man.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Men have different capacities and react differently to stress. But the stronger ones raised up the weaker ones, and both became stronger in the process.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I believed that I would become a counsellor to the Thembu king,”
―
Nelson Mandela
“كيف يمكن لفتى من الريف ان يتفوق علينا نحن المتقدمين وهو لايتقن حتى الحديث بالانجليزية”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It was ANC policy to try to educate all people, even our enemies: we believed that all men, even prison service warders, were capable of change, and we did our utmost to try to sway them.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Although I am a gregarious person, I love solitude even more.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“One day, I was on the front lawn of the property and aimed the gun at a sparrow perched high in a tree. Hazel Goldreich, Arthur's wife, was watching me and jokingly remarked that I would never hit the target. But she had hardly finished the sentence when the sparrow fell to the ground. I turned to her and was about to boast, when the Goldreichs' son Paul, then about five years old, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, "David, why did you kill that bird? Its mother will be sad." My mood immediately shifted from one of pride to shame; I felt that this small boy had far more humanity than I did. It was an odd sensation for a man who was the leader of a nascent guerrilla army.”
―
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.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Once a person is determined to help themselves, there is nothing that can stop them.”
―
Nelson Mandela
