Nelson Mandela Quotes
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The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.
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In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
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I have come to join you today to add our own voice to the universal call for Palestinian self-determination and statehood. We would be beneath our own reason for existence as government and as a nation, if the resolution of the problems of the Middle East did not feature prominently on our agenda.
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I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.
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I have always believed that exercise is the key not only to physical health but to peace of mind.
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When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.
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What I am condemning is that one power, with a president George W. Bush who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.
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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. And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.
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No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.
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Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?
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I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.
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Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.
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Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.
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We too are also inspired by the life and example of Jose Marti, who is not only a Cuban and Latin American hero but justly honoured by all who struggle to be free.
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Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.
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To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.
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We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
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I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.
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Ethiopia has always held a special place in my own imagination and the prospect of visiting attracted me more strongly than a trip to France, England and America combined. I felt I would be visiting my own genesis, unearthing the roots of what made me an African. Meeting the emperor himself would be like shaking hands with history.
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Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.
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Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity.
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I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.
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It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.
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I have retired, but if there's anything that would kill me it is to wake up in the morning not knowing what to do.