Quotes from Nelson Mandela

lay a lost and delightful world, the world of my childhood, the world of sweet and irresponsible days at Qunu and Mqhekezweni. Now I was a man, and I would never again play thinti, or steal maize, or drink milk from a cow's udder.

In confidence we lay our cause before the whole world. Whether we win or whether we die, freedom will rise in Africa like the sun from the morning clouds.

Je ne perds jamais. Soit je gagne, soit j'apprends.

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. 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.

Recordé a todos, una y otra vez, que la lucha por la liberación no había sido una batalla contra otros grupos u otros colores de piel, sino contra un sistema represivo.

Banning not only confines one physically, it imprisons one's spirit. it induces a kind of psychological claustrophobia that makes one yearn not only for freedom of movement but spiritual escape...This insidious effect of bans was that at a certain point one began to think that the opponent was not without but within.

This was one of the state's most barbarous techniques of applying pressure: imprisoning the wives and children of freedom fighters. Many men in prison were able to handle anything the authorities did to them, but the thought of the state doing the same thing to their families was almost impossible to bear.

we fought injustice to preserve our own humanity.

Es de sentido común que un sistema legal inmoral e injusto sólo puede engendrar desprecio hacia sus normas y sus leyes. Llegamos

The major event facing the country in 1958 was the general election – 'general' only in the sense that three million whites could participate, but none of the thirteen million Africans.

Nadie nace odiando a otra persona por el color de su piel, su procedencia o su religión. El odio se aprende, y si es posible aprender a odiar, es posible aprender a amar, ya que el amor surge con mayor naturalidad en el corazón del hombre que el odio.

Here I experienced a rather strange sensation. As I was boarding the plane I saw that the pilot was black. I had never seen a black pilot before, and the instant I did I had to quell my panic. How could a black man fly a plane? But a moment later I caught myself: I had fallen into the apartheid mind-set, thinking Africans were inferior and that flying was a white man's job. I sat back in my seat, and chided myself for such thoughts.

Ironically, it was the regent himself who was indirectly to blame for this, for it was the education he had afforded me that had caused me to reject such traditional customs

A philosopher once noted that something is odd if a person is not liberal when he is young and conservative when he is old.

The struggle is my life.

leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead,

have always endeavoured to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion. I always remember the regent's axiom: a leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go on ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

Een mens die een ander mens van zijn vrijheid berooft, is een gevangene van de haat, opgesloten achter de tralies van vooroordelen en kleingeestigheid.

not because they always agreed with him, but because the regent listened to and respected all different opinions.

Ma il silenzio amoroso tra una madre e un figlio non è una dimensione solitaria.

In my language there is a saying: "Ndiwelimilambo enamagama" (I have crossed famous rivers). It means that one has traveled a great distance, that one has had wide experience and gained some wisdom from it.

This would be a hazardous life, and I would be apart from my family, but when a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.

learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate.

tenían ese gran respeto por la educación que tan a menudo muestran quienes carecen de ella...