“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Although we had no hope of defeating the enemy in the battlefield, nevertheless, we fought back to keep the idea of liberation alive. From a conversation with Richard Stengel, January 13, 1993”
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Nelson Mandela
“Courage is not the absence of fear — it s inspiring others to move beyond it.”
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Nelson Mandela
“One cannot be prepared for something while secretly believing it will not happen.”
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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 the freedom of others.”
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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.”
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Nelson Mandela
“We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.”
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Nelson Mandela
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Crime must be brought under control... Freedom without civility, freedom without the ability to live in peace, was not true freedom at all.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other...The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I always remember the regent’s axiom: a leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
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Nelson Mandela
“But I had little knowledge of Marxism, and in political discussions with my communist friends I found myself handicapped by my ignorance of their philosophy. I decided to remedy this.”
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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.”
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Nelson Mandela