“Although I am a gregarious person, I love solitude even more.”
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Nelson Mandela
“A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I believed that I would become a counsellor to the Thembu king,”
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Nelson Mandela
“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 its opposite... Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.”
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Nelson Mandela
“A blind pursuit of cheap popularity has nothing to do with revolution."
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Nelson Mandela
“It is music and dancing that make me at peace with the world.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Although Verwoerd thought Africans were lower than animals, his death did not yield us any pleasure. Political assassination is not something I or the ANC ever supported. It is a primitive way of contending with an opponent”
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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 freedom to others. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
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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
“Banning not only confines one physically, it imprisons one's spirit. it induces a kind of psychological claustrophobia that makes one yearn not only for freedom of movement but spiritual escape...This insidious effect of bans was that at a certain point one began to think that the opponent was not without but within.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Money wont create success, the fredom to make it will”
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Nelson Mandela
“A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire”
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Nelson Mandela
“We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”
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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.”
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Nelson Mandela