Top 500 Nelson Mandela Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “For me, survival is the ability to cope with difficulties, with circumstances, and to overcome them.”

— Nelson Mandela

252. “Whether you change the linen or stitch up wounds, cook the food or dispense the medicines, it is in your hands to help build a public service worthy of all those who gave their lives for the dream of democracy.”

— Nelson Mandela

253. “Disasters will always come and go, leaving their victims either completely broken or steeled and seasoned and better able to face the next crop of challenges that may occur.”

— Nelson Mandela

254. “Whenever I am with energetic young people, I feel like a recharged battery.”

— Nelson Mandela

255. “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.”

— Nelson Mandela

256. “This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees.”

— Nelson Mandela

257. “The path of those who preach love, and not hatred, is not easy. They often have to wear a crown of thorns.”

— Nelson Mandela

258. “Teach the children that Africans are not one iota inferior to Europeans.”

— Nelson Mandela

259. “There is a universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings irrespective of their social status.”

— Nelson Mandela

260. “Our task is not to liberate the oppressed, but to liberate the oppressors.”

— Nelson Mandela

261. “Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.”

— Nelson Mandela

262. “We recall our terrible past so that we can deal with it, to forgive where forgiveness is necessary, without forgetting; to ensure that never again will such inhumanity tear us apart; and to move ourselves to eradicate a legacy that lurks dangerously as a threat to our democracy.”

— Nelson Mandela

263. “Freedom alone is not enough without light to read at night, without time or access to water to irrigate your farm, without the ability to catch fish to feed your family.”

— Nelson Mandela

264. “The victory of democracy in South Africa is the common achievement of all humanity.”

— Nelson Mandela

265. “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

— Nelson Mandela

266. “The call now is for each of us to ask ourselves: are we doing all we can to help build the country of our dreams?”

— Nelson Mandela

267. “Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank.”

— Nelson Mandela

268. “Blaming things on the past does not make them better.”

— Nelson Mandela

269. “I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.”

— Nelson Mandela

270. “To truly lead one’s people, one must also truly know them.”

— Nelson Mandela

271. “As long as many of our people still live in utter poverty, as long as children still live under plastic covers, as long as many of our people are still without jobs, no South African should rest and wallow in the joy of freedom.”

— Nelson Mandela

272. “To the youth of today, I also have a wish to make: be the scriptwriters of your destiny and feature yourselves as stars that showed the way towards a brighter future.”

— Nelson Mandela

273. “The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices – submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom.”

— Nelson Mandela

274. “The cause of Communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind!”

— Nelson Mandela

275. “The message of reconciliation, of nation-building, of granting amnesty, indemnity, has struck a powerful, favorable chord. And people can understand that we’re here not for purposes of retribution but to forget the past and to build our country.”

— Nelson Mandela

276. “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.”

— Nelson Mandela

277. “The virtue and the strength of UWC is that it provides small, but powerful cells of innovation, catalysts for change, breaking barriers of habit and opening broader vistas of experience for both pupils and educationalists.”

— Nelson Mandela

278. “The time comes in the life of any nation when there remains only two choices – submit or fight.”

— Nelson Mandela

279. “We can’t win a war, but we can win an election.”

— Nelson Mandela

280. “Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.”

— Nelson Mandela

281. “It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor.”

— Nelson Mandela

282. “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

283. “Even behind prison walls I can see the heavy clouds and the blue sky over the horizon.”

— Nelson Mandela

284. “The world remains beset by so much human suffering, poverty and deprivation. It is in your hands to make of our world a better one for all, especially the poor, vulnerable and marginalized.”

— Nelson Mandela

285. “For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.”

— Nelson Mandela

286. “I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.”

— Nelson Mandela

287. “Thinking too well of people often allows them to be better than they otherwise would.”

— Nelson Mandela

288. “Poetry cannot block a bullet or still a sjambok, but it can bear witness to brutality-thereby cultivating a flower in a graveyard.”

— Nelson Mandela

289. “When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?”

— Nelson Mandela

290. “In the 21st Century, the capacity to communicate will almost certainly be a key human right.”

— Nelson Mandela

291. “To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of huger and deprivation is to dehumanize them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid.”

— Nelson Mandela

292. “Through its imperialist system Britain brought about untold suffering of millions of people. And this is an historical fact. To be able to admit this would increase the respect, you know, which we have for British institutions.”

— Nelson Mandela

293. “Freedom can never be taken for granted. Each generation must safeguard it and extend it. Your parents and elders sacrificed much so that you should have freedom without suffering what they did. Use this precious right to ensure that the darkness of the past never returns.”

— Nelson Mandela

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

— Nelson Mandela

295. “Jinnah is a constant source of inspiration for all those who are fighting against racial and group discrimination.”

— Nelson Mandela

296. “We need to exert ourselves that much more, and break out of the vicious cycle of dependence imposed on us by the financially powerful: those in command of immense market power and those who dare to fashion the world in their own image.”

— Nelson Mandela

297. “My respect for human beings is based not on the colour of a man’s skin nor authority he may wield, but purely on merit.”

— Nelson Mandela

298. “My family is very large. 42 million.”

— Nelson Mandela

299. “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

300. “When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.”

— Nelson Mandela