Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

59 Sourced Quotes

View all Nelson Mandela Quotes

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

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

Nelson Mandela

I have always endeavoured to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion.

Nelson Mandela

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

Nelson Mandela

You may succeed in delaying, but never in preventing the transition of South Africa to a democracy.

Nelson Mandela

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

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

Nelson Mandela

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

Nelson Mandela

There is little favorable to be said about poverty, but it was often an incubator of true friendship. Many people will appear to befriend you when you are wealthy, but precious few will do the same when you are poor. If wealth is a magnet, poverty is a kind of repellent. Yet, poverty often brings out the true generosity in others.

Nelson Mandela

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

Nelson Mandela

Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished

Nelson Mandela

When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.

Nelson Mandela

For a revolution is not just a question of pulling a trigger; its purpose is to create a fair just society

Nelson Mandela

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

Nelson Mandela

The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. 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. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

Nelson Mandela

In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.

Nelson Mandela

A man does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards, but when I was notified that I had won the 1993 Nobel peace prize jointly with Mr. F. W. de Klerk, I was deeply moved. The Nobel Peace Prize had a special meaning for me because of its involvement with South Africa... The award was a tribute to all South Africans, and especially to those who fought in the struggle; I would accept it on their behalf.

Nelson Mandela

The doctors and nurses treated me in a natural way as though they had been dealing with blacks on a basis of equality all their lives. It reaffirmed my long-held belief that education was the enemy of prejudice. These were men and women of science, and science had no room for racism.

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 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

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

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

The Church was as concerned with this world as the next: I saw that virtually all of the achievements of Africans seemed to have come about through the missionary work of the Church.

Nelson Mandela

I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.

Nelson Mandela

I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice.

Nelson Mandela

I went as an observer, not a participant, for I do not think that I ever spoke. I wanted to understand the issues under discussion, evaluate the arguments, see the calibre of the men involved.

Nelson Mandela