Quote

When we dehumanise and demonise our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them.

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
Madiba
Abandon
Seek
Possibility
Violence
Resolving
Differences
Peacefully
Opponents
Justify

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After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
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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.
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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?
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History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks.
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I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.
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If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings.... What I am condemning is that one power, with a president [George W. Bush] who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.
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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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Apart from life, a strong constitusion and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla
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Our task is not to liberate the oppressed, but to liberate the oppressors
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The most difficult matter is not so much to change the world as yourself.
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We should never forget those on whose shoulders we stand and those who paid the supreme price for freedom.
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For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.
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Now we are in the second term of the government of a united nation and the government has done very well. One thing they have done, one thing people could not be blind to, was the achievement this government has made in giving human beings dignity, which they did not enjoy before. They now have dignity.
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I discovered even before I went to jail that apartheid was not run by people who were monolithic in their approach. Some of them didn't even believe in apartheid.
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[I] read Anne Frank's diary [while imprisoned] on Robben Island and derived much encouragement from it.
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Do not allow your anger to control your reason, but rather your reason to control your anger.
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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.
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One effect of sustained conflict is to narrow our vision of what is possible. Time and time again, conflicts are resolved through shifts that were unimaginable at the start.
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I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.
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There is nothing more dangerous than a humiliated man.
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