Nelson Mandela Quotes

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.

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.

There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty.

Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.

It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it.

I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot.

From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in South Africa, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort.

You know, you can only lead them from behind.

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

If you are poor, you are not likely to live long.

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

I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car, and I wore a chauffeur’s cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master’s car.

Even if you have a terminal disease, you don’t have to sit down and mope. Enjoy life and challenge the illness that you have.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

Whatever position I occupied, it was the result of colleagues – of my comrades in the movement – who had decided in their wisdom to use me for the purpose of focusing the attention of the country and the international community on me.

I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.