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The past is a rich resource on which we can draw in order to make decisions for the future, but it does not dictate our choices. We should look back at the past and select what is good, and leave behind what is bad.

Nelson Mandela

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Nelson Mandela
Age: 95 †
Born: 1918
Born: July 18
Died: 2013
Died: December 5
Autobiographer
Former President Of South Africa
Lawyer
Political Activist
Political Prisoner
Politician
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Mandela
Prisoner 46664
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More quotes by Nelson Mandela

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I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.
Nelson Mandela
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If you want the cooperation of humans around you, you must make them feel they are important - and you do that by being genuine and humble.
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If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.
Nelson Mandela
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Our task is not to liberate the oppressed, but to liberate the oppressors
Nelson Mandela
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Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it's very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.
Nelson Mandela
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It always gives me great pleasure to be surrounded by the beautiful children of our land. Whenever I am with the energetic young people ... I feel like a recharged battery, confident that our country can look forward to great things.
Nelson Mandela
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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
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The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.
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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
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Let the efforts of us all, prove that he [Martin Luther King] was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold
Nelson Mandela
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Although Verwoerd thought Africans were lower than animals, his death did not yield us any pleasure. Political assassination is not something I or the ANC ever supported. It is a primitive way of contending with an opponent
Nelson Mandela
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A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.
Nelson Mandela
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Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.
Nelson Mandela
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Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
Nelson Mandela
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Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?
Nelson Mandela
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I really wanted to retire and rest and spend more time with my children, my grandchildren and of course with my wife.
Nelson Mandela
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The challenge for each one of you is to take up these ideals of tolerance and respect for others and put them to practical use in your schools, your communities and throughout your lives.
Nelson Mandela
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I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.
Nelson Mandela
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There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.
Nelson Mandela
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If you sit down and talk to a person, it's easy to convince him that apartheid can never save a country and will lead to the slaughtering of innocent people - including his own people.
Nelson Mandela