Top 500 Nelson Mandela Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Out of the experience of extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud...”

— Nelson Mandela

352. “Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence.”

— Nelson Mandela

353. “Only 50 years ago persons with intellectual disabilities were scorned, isolated and neglected. Today, they are able to attend school, become employed and assimilate into their local community.”

— Nelson Mandela

354. “We don’t have to be victims of our past, that we can let go of our bitterness, and that all of us can achieve greatness.”

— Nelson Mandela

355. “One of the sad realities today is that very few people, especially young people, read books. Unless we can find imaginative ways of addressing this reality, future generations are in danger of losing their history.”

— Nelson Mandela

356. “Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial; and when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another.”

— Nelson Mandela

357. “The death sentence is a barbaric act.”

— Nelson Mandela

358. “The collapse of good conscience and the absence of accountability and public scrutiny have led to crimes against humanity and violations of international law.”

— Nelson Mandela

359. “It is also the fate of leadership to be misunderstood. It is a grave error for any leader to be oversensitive in the face of criticism, to conduct discussions as if he or she is a schoolmaster talking to less informed and inexperienced learners.”

— Nelson Mandela

360. “Soccer is one of the most unifying activities amongst us.”

— Nelson Mandela

361. “It’s not our weaknesses that frighten us. It’s our strengths.”

— Nelson Mandela

362. “I am not the only one who did not want revenge. Almost all my colleagues in prison did not want revenge, because there is no time to do anything else except to try and save your people.”

— Nelson Mandela

363. “A new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.”

— Nelson Mandela

364. “Leaders will have to give clear and decisive leadership towards a world of tolerance and respect for difference, and an uncompromising commitment to peaceful solutions of conflicts and disputes.”

— Nelson Mandela

365. “We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace. We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people.”

— Nelson Mandela

366. “The New World Order that is in the making must focus on the creation of a world of democracy, peace and prosperity for all.”

— Nelson Mandela

367. “Of course we desire education and we think it is a good thing, but you don’t have to have education in order to know that you want certain fundamental rights, you have got aspirations, you have got acclaims. It has nothing to do with education whatsoever.”

— Nelson Mandela

368. “There must be an end to white monopoly on political power, and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratized.”

— Nelson Mandela

369. “Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour, Desmond Tutu’s voice will always be the voice of the voiceless.”

— Nelson Mandela

370. “People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‘We want peace, we want stability,’ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.”

— Nelson Mandela

371. “Trade justice for the developing world and for this generation is a truly significant way for the developed countries to show commitment to bringing about an end to global poverty.”

— Nelson Mandela

372. “I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it.”

— Nelson Mandela

373. “There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested...”

— Nelson Mandela

374. “Men come and men go, I have come and I will go when my time comes.”

— Nelson Mandela

375. “It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.”

— Nelson Mandela

376. “When we decided to take up arms, it was because the only other choice was to surrender and to submit to slavery.”

— Nelson Mandela

377. “I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things. Those things I still had control over. And I decided not to give them away.”

— Nelson Mandela

378. “It can be said that there are four basic and primary things that the mass of people in a society wish for: to live in a safe environment, to be able to work and provide for themselves, to have access to good public health and to have sound educational opportunities for their children.”

— Nelson Mandela

379. “The so-called ‘Palestinian autonomous areas’ are bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli apartheid system.”

— Nelson Mandela

380. “We cannot blame other people for our troubles. We are not victims of the influx of foreign people into South Africa. We must remember that it was mainly due to the aggressive and hostile policies of the apartheid regime that the economic development of our neighbours was undermined.”

— Nelson Mandela

381. “Home is home even for those who aspire to serve wider interests and who have established their home of choice in distant regions.”

— Nelson Mandela

382. “I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.”

— Nelson Mandela

383. “We signal that good can be achieved amongst human beings who are prepared to trust, prepared to believe in the goodness of people.”

— Nelson Mandela

384. “We are extricating ourselves from a system that insulted our common humanity by dividing us from one another on the basis of race and setting us against each other as oppressed and oppressor. That system committed a crime against humanity.”

— Nelson Mandela

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

— Nelson Mandela

386. “Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.”

— Nelson Mandela

387. “We can neither heal nor build if, on the one hand the rich in our society see the poor as hordes of irritants or if on the other hand the poor sit back, expecting charity. All of us must take responsibility for the upliftment of our conditions, prepared to give our best to the benefit of all.”

— Nelson Mandela

388. “Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.”

— Nelson Mandela

389. “Let us remind ourselves that it is ordinary people – men and women, boys and girls – that make the world a special place.”

— Nelson Mandela

390. “You negotiate in bad faith if you do not forgive your adversary.”

— Nelson Mandela

391. “It is also the fate of leadership to be misunderstood. For historians, academics, writers and journalists to reflect great lives according to their own subjective canon.”

— Nelson Mandela

392. “In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.”

— Nelson Mandela

393. “Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.”

— Nelson Mandela

394. “The importance of a high moral code, which is at the foundation of the Scout movement, cannot be stressed too highly.”

— Nelson Mandela

395. “People tend to measure themselves by external accomplishments, but jail allows a person to focus on internal ones; such as honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, generosity and an absence of variety. You learn to look into yourself.”

— Nelson Mandela

396. “Our experience has taught us that with goodwill a negotiated solution can be found for even the most profound problems.”

— Nelson Mandela

397. “In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”

— Nelson Mandela

398. “The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole.”

— Nelson Mandela

399. “I admire young people who are concerned with the affairs of their community and nation perhaps because I also became involved in struggle whist I was still at school.”

— Nelson Mandela

400. “Abject poverty is demeaning, is an assault on the dignity of those that suffer it. In the end it demeans us all. It makes the freedom of all of us less meaningful.”

— Nelson Mandela