Nelson Mandela Quotes

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

It always seems impossible until it's done.

It was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity.

Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.

I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

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

Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.

It is a simple tale, but its message is an enduring one: virtue and generosity will be rewarded in ways that one cannot know.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

In judging our progress as individual we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education. These are, of course, important in measuring one's success in material matters and it is perfectly understandable if many people exert themselves mainly to achieve all these. But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being. Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others - qualites which are within reach of every soul - are the foundation of one's spiritual life.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

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.

This document [the Reconstruction and Development Programme] was translated into a simpler manifesto called 'A Better Life for All', which in turn became the ANC's campaign slogan.