Quotes By Nelson Mandela

My son has died of AIDS.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.

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.

Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

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.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Let us give publicity to H.I.V./AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of H.I.V./AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you are poor, you are not likely to live long.

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

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.