Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) was the towering figure of South Africa’s civil rights movement. He was a hero to millions around the world as a moral paragon on par with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.. He dismantled the strict policy of racial segregation and discrimination known as apartheid and become president in 1994—the first leader of his country elected by people of all races.
Born Rolihlahla to a tribal chief in Mvezo, South Africa, he was the first member of his family to attend a school where his British teachers gave him a new name: Nelson. He gave up his hereditary rights as the son of a tribal chief, chose to become a lawyer, and earned his degree at the University of South Africa.
As a young lawyer, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC,) a black nationalist organization that organized protests against apartheid. When it was outlawed in 1960, the ANC formed a military wing with Mandela as its leader. he was convicted for plotting to overthrow the pro-apartheid government by violence. Mandela spent 27 years in prison but refused to carry ill will against his captors.
After leading the African National Congress to victory in the country’s first multiracial election in 1994, Mandela became president but voluntarily stepped down after one term. Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Collections of Mandela’s writings and speeches are I Am Prepared to Die (1964, 1986,) No Easy Walk to Freedom (1965, 2002,) The Struggle Is My Life (1978, 1990,) and In His Own Words (2003.) His autobiographies are Long Walk to Freedom (1994) and Dare Not Linger: The Presidential Years (2017.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Nelson Mandela
I cannot conceive of Israel withdrawing if Arab states do not recognize Israel, within secure borders.
—Nelson Mandela
A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.
—Nelson Mandela
It is an achievement for a man to do his duty on earth irrespective of the consequences.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Duty
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
—Nelson Mandela
You may succeed in delaying, but never in preventing the transition of South Africa to a democracy.
—Nelson Mandela
A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Forgiveness
Courageous people do not fear forgiving for the sake of peace.
—Nelson Mandela
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
—Nelson Mandela
There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Books, Reading
If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Reputation
After climbing a great hill, one 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 can only rest for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk has not yet ended.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Freedom
I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, “Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people”; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.
—Nelson Mandela
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. 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.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Love, Tolerance
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
—Nelson Mandela
These numbers are staggering, in fact incomprehensible. By all accounts, we are dealing with the greatest health crisis in human history.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Humanity
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Bravery, Courage
The authorities liked to say that we received a balanced diet; it was indeed balanced—between the unpalatable and the inedible.
—Nelson Mandela
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Forgiveness
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.
—Nelson Mandela
Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others—qualities which are within easy reach of every soul—are the foundation of one’s spiritual life.
—Nelson Mandela
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Society
The so-called ‘Palestinian autonomous areas’ are bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli apartheid system.
—Nelson Mandela
Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Possibilities
Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Communism
We recall the joy and excitement of a nation that had found itself, the collective relief that we had stepped out of our restrictive past, and the expectant air of walking into a brighter future.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Liberty
It was the government that should have been told to refrain from its inhuman policy of violence and massacre, not the African people. It was further argued that it is wrong and indefensible for a political organization to repudiate picketing, which is used the world over as a legitimate form of pressure to prevent scabbing.
—Nelson Mandela
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Change, Self-Discovery
It always seems impossible until it’s done.
—Nelson Mandela
There is no passion to be found in playing small—settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
—Nelson Mandela
Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Freedom
Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.
—Nelson Mandela
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Words
s a leader… I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a con-sensus of what I heard in the discussion. I always remember the axiom: a leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.
—Nelson Mandela
Our human compassion binds us to one another—not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
—Nelson Mandela
I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being an optimist is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward.
—Nelson Mandela
Money will not create success, the freedom to make it will.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: One liners
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.
—Nelson Mandela
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
—Nelson Mandela
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Business, Negotiation
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
—Nelson Mandela
Topics: Change
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