Nelson Mandela Quotes
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I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.
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There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.
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Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality.
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Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
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Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.
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If you are poor, you are not likely to live long.
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I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world.
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I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car, and I wore a chauffeur's cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master's car.
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If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.
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By ancestry, I was born to rule.
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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.
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I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.
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I am confident that nobody... will accuse me of selfishness if I ask to spend time, while I am still in good health, with my family, my friends and also with myself.
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Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.
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After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one's person.
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Before I went to jail, I was active in politics as a member of South Africa's leading organization - and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think.
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Leaders in all spheres who are living with HIV should be encouraged, not coerced, to lead by example and disclose their HIV status.
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There must be an end to white monopoly on political power, and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratized.
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At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.
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Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
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A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
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The ANC has never at any period of its history advocated a revolutionary change in the economic structure of the country, nor has it, to the best of my recollection, ever condemned capitalist society.
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We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of our people who dared to rise up against a social system whose very essence is war, violence, racism, oppression, repression and the impoverishment of an entire people.
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I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.