“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“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
“On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture. Africans of my generation—and even today—generally have both an English and an African name. Whites were either unable or unwilling to pronounce an African name, and considered it uncivilized to have one. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“It is a simple tale, but its message is an enduring one: virtue and generosity will be rewarded in ways that one cannot know.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Non-violence is a good policy when conditions permit.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“A blind pursuit of cheap popularity has nothing to do with revolution."
―
Nelson Mandela
“Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed towards the sun, one's feet moving forward.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“ As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
―
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
“It is most unusual to return to a place that has changed in ways you yourself have altered.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“إن المرء قد يصل في لحظة معينة إلى الإيمان بأن مصدر الظلم لم يعد في الخارج بل في داخله هو نفسه.”
―
Nelson Mandela
