Nelson Mandela Quotes
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There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
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By ancestry, I was born to rule.
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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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Those who conduct themselves with morality, integrity and consistency need not fear the forces of inhumanity and cruelty.
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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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There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.
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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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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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My son has died of AIDS.
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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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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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I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.
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If you are poor, you are not likely to live long.
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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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The Gandhian influence dominated freedom struggles on the African continent right up to the 1960s because of the power it generated and the unity it forged among the apparently powerless. Nonviolence was the official stance of all major African coalitions, and the South African A.N.C. remained implacably opposed to violence for most of its existence.
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I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world.
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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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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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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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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 cannot conceive of Israel withdrawing if Arab states do not recognize Israel, within secure borders.
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It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.
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Forget the past.