Quotes By Nelson Mandela

There is no such thing as part freedom.

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.

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 are poor, you are not likely to live long.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

Leaders in all spheres who are living with HIV should be encouraged, not coerced, to lead by example and disclose their HIV status.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

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.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

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.

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.

There is nothing I fear more than waking up without a program that will help me bring a little happiness to those with no resources, those who are poor, illiterate, and ridden with terminal disease.

Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.

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.

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?

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

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.

I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world.

I made a mistake by being ejected from the presidency. Next time, I will choose a Cabinet which will allow me to be life President.

We can't afford to be killing one another.

Africans require, want, the franchise on the basis of one man one vote. They want political independence.

Money won't create success, the freedom to make it will.

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.