Nelson Mandela Quotes

261 Sourced Quotes

To the youth of today, I also have a wish to make: be the scriptwriters of your destiny and feature yourselves as stars that showed the way towards a brighter future.

Nelson Mandela
Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial; and when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another.

Nelson Mandela
Politics can be strengthened by music, but music has a potency that defies politics.

Nelson Mandela
Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure.

Nelson Mandela
I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.

Nelson Mandela
This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees.

Nelson Mandela
In all disputes a point is arrived at where no party, no matter how right or wrong it might have been at the start of that dispute, will any longer be totally in the right or totally in the wrong. Such a point, I believe, has been reached in this debate. Let us not equivocate: a tragedy of unprecedented proportions is unfolding in Africa.

Nelson Mandela
One of the sad realities today is that very few people, especially young people, read books. Unless we can find imaginative ways of addressing this reality, future generations are in danger of losing their history.

Nelson Mandela
It is a grave error for any leader to be oversensitive in the face of criticism

Nelson Mandela
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 And people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary for which people go to hell and not to heaven.

Nelson Mandela
We slaughter one another in our words and attitudes. We slaughter one another in the stereotypes and mistrust that linger in our heads, and the words of hate we spew from our lips.

Nelson Mandela
It is so easy to break down and destroy.
The heroes are those who make peace and
build.

Nelson Mandela
Government violence can do only one thing and that is to breed counter-violence.

Nelson Mandela
We have waited too long for our freedom. We can no longer wait.

Nelson Mandela
We have laid the foundation for a better life. Things that were unimaginable a few years ago have become everyday reality. I belong to the generation of leaders for whom the achievement of democracy was the defining challenge.

Nelson Mandela
I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.

Nelson Mandela
There was much in such a society that was primitive and insecure and it certainly could never measure up to the demands of the present epoch. But in such a society are contained the seeds of revolutionary democracy in which none will be held in slavery.

Nelson Mandela
When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.

Nelson Mandela
We can build a society grounded on friendship and our common humanity - a society founded on tolerance. That is the only road open to us.

Nelson Mandela
There can be no greater gift than that of giving one's time and energy to help others without expecting anything in return.

Nelson Mandela
I enjoyed the discipline and solitariness of long-distance running, which allowed me to escape from the hurly-burly of school life.

Nelson Mandela
Who could doubt that sport is a crucial window for the propagation of fair play and justice? After all, fair play is a value that is essential to sport.

Nelson Mandela
The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole.

Nelson Mandela
When we dehumanise and demonise our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them.

Nelson Mandela
In the end, reconciliation is a spiritual process, which requires more than just a legal framework. It has to happen in the hearts and minds of people.

Nelson Mandela
We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.

Nelson Mandela
A bright future beckons. The onus is on us, through hard work, honesty and integrity, to reach for the stars.

Nelson Mandela
The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner, is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished.

Nelson Mandela
In some ways, I saw the garden as a metaphor for certain aspects of my life. A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, plants seeds, and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the results. Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.

Nelson Mandela
AIDS is no longer just a disease, it is a human rights issue.

Nelson Mandela