Quotes from Nelson Mandela

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. -Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1918)

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

Once a person is determined to help themselves, there is nothing that can stop them.

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

I never lose, I either win or learn

Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

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.

Peace is the greatest weapon for development that any person can have.

I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.

No single person can liberate a country. You can only liberate a country if you act as a collective.

Lead from the front — but don t leave your base behind.

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.

i love playing and chatting with children...feeding and putting them to bed with a little story, and being away from the family has troubled me throughout my...life. i like relaxing at the house, reading quietly, taking in the sweet smell that comes from the pots, sitting around a table with the family and taking out my wife and children. when you can no longer enjoy these simple pleasures something valuable is taken away from your life and you feel it in your daily work.

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

Success in politics demands that you must take your people into confidence about your views and state them very clearly, very politely, very calmly, but nevertheless, state them openly.

I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his kin, 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 the opposite.

Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world

Only free men can negotiate,prisoners can't enter in contracts

There are few misfortunes in this world that you cannot turn into a personal trimuph if you have the iron will and the neccessary skill.

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

Money wont create success, the fredom to make it will

I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other...The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements.