“In another conversation I said, ‘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

“But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.”

Nelson Mandela

“The purpose of freedom is to create it for others. Prison desk calendar, written on Robben Island, June 2, 1979” 

Nelson Mandela

“I believed that I would become a counsellor to the Thembu king,”

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

“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.”

Nelson Mandela

“He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems.”

Nelson Mandela

“A friend of mine once saw Mandela in a South African airport and told me this story. The president had noticed a lady who was walking by with her daughter, a beautiful five- or six-year-old girl, with blond hair and blue eyes. Mandela walked up to this little girl and leaned down and shook her hand, and he said, “Do you know who I am?” And the child smiled and said, “Yes, you are President Mandela.” Mandela said, “Yes, I am your president. And if you work very hard in school and you learn a lot and you are nice to everybody, you too could grow up to be President of South Africa.”

Nelson Mandela

“He did not need to be ordained, for the traditional religion of the Xhosas is characterized by a cosmic wholeness, so that there is little distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the natural and the supernatural.”

Nelson Mandela

“Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one’s grip and even one’s sanity.”

Nelson Mandela

“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Nelson Mandela

“Es de sentido común que un sistema legal inmoral e injusto sólo puede engendrar desprecio hacia sus normas y sus leyes. Llegamos”

Nelson Mandela

“We do not want freedom without bread, nor do we want bread without freedom.

Nelson Mandela

“It is not my ambition to marry a white woman or swim in a white pool. It is political equality that we want.”

Nelson Mandela

“before either of us knew it, we were in the same room and in each other’s arms. I kissed and held my wife for the first time in all these many years. It was a moment I had dreamed about a thousand times. It was as if I were still dreaming. I held her to me for what seemed like an eternity. We were still and silent except for the sound of our hearts. I did not want to let go of her at all, but I broke free and embraced my daughter and then took her child into my lap. It had been twenty-one years since I had even touched my wife’s hand.”

Nelson Mandela


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