“If I preached unity, I must act like a unifier, even at the risk of perhaps alienating some of my own colleagues.”
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Nelson Mandela
“There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front.”
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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
“Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?”
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Nelson Mandela
“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
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Nelson Mandela
“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.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his kin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the opposite.”
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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
“Men, I think, are not capable of doing nothing, of saying nothing, of not reacting to injustice, of not protesting against oppression, of not striving for the good of society and the good life in the ways they see it.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It will forever remain an accusation and a challenge to all men and women of conscience that it took as long as it has, before all of us stood up to say enough is enough.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Only mass education, he used to say, would free my people, arguing that an educated man could not be oppressed because he could think for himself.”
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Nelson Mandela
“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.”
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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
