“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
“I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom.”
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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
“Resentment is a method of self harm.
"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”
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Nelson Mandela
“Like all Xhosa children, I acquired knowledge mainly through observation. We were meant to learn through imitation and emulation, not through questions. When I first visited the homes of whites, I was often dumbfounded by the number and nature of questions that children asked of their parents—and their parents’ unfailing willingness to answer them. In my household, questions were considered a nuisance; adults imparted information as they considered necessary.”
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Nelson Mandela
“I was a young man who attempted to make up for his ignorance with militancy.”
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Nelson Mandela
“overcoming fear, personal scarifies for the cause of freedom of all, and ability to see good in your enemies – No one is born hating another person because of the color of your skin, or his background, or his religion … if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.”
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Nelson Mandela
“It was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity.”
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Nelson Mandela
“LIFE IN ALEXANDRA was exhilarating and precarious. Its atmosphere was alive, its spirit adventurous, its people resourceful. Although the township did boast some handsome buildings, it could fairly be described as a slum, living testimony to the neglect of the authorities. The roads were unpaved and dirty, and filled with hungry, undernourished children scampering around half-naked. The air was thick with the smoke from coal fires in tin braziers and stoves. A single water tap served several houses. Pools of stinking, stagnant water full of maggots collected by the side of the road. Alexandra was known as “Dark City” for its complete absence of electricity. Walking home at night was perilous, for there were no lights, the silence pierced by yells, laughter, and occasional gunfire. So different from the darkness of the Transkei, which seemed to envelop one in a welcome embrace.”
―
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.”
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Nelson Mandela
“As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.”
―
Nelson Mandela
“I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.”
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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
“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
