Quotes By Nelson Mandela

AIDS is our number one enemy. This enemy can be defeated. While the research for a cure continues, four principles - love, support, acceptance and care for those affected - can make us winners.

To a freedom fighter hope is what a lifebelt is to a swimmer - a guarantee that one will keep afloat and free from danger.

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.

I would like to be remembered not as anyone unique or special, but as part of a great team in this country that has struggled for many years, for decades and even centuries.

The real meaning of the spoken word has to be demonstrated by practical deeds.

I have always admired men and women who used their talents to serve the community, and who were highly respected and admired for their efforts and sacrifices, even though they held no office whatsoever in government or society.

Leaders in all spheres who are living with HIV should be encouraged, not coerced, to lead by example and disclose their HIV status.

I can't help it if the ladies take note of me; I am not going to protest.

There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty.

Extremists on all sides thrive, fed by the blood lust of centuries gone by.

One of the things that made me long to be back in prison was that I had so little opportunity for reading, thinking and quiet reflection after my release. I intend, amongst other things, to give myself much more opportunity for such reading and reflection.

If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace.

It is the dictate of history to bring to the fore the kind of leaders who seize the moment, who cohere the wishes and aspirations of the oppressed. Such was Steve Biko, a fitting product of his time; a proud representative of the re-awakening of a people.

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.

Continuously, we have to fight to defeat the primitive tendency towards the glorification of arms, the adulation of force, born of the illusion that injustice can be perpetuated by the capacity to kill, or that disputes are necessarily best resolved by resort to violent means.

The freedom we enjoy is a richly textured gift handcrafted by ordinary folk.

There is little favorable to be said about poverty, but it was often an incubator of true friendship.

We of the ANC had always stood for a non-racial democracy, and we shrank from any action which might drive the races further apart than they already were.

I hope that our movement will always hold that commitment to non-racialism dear in its thoughts, policies and actions. It is that commitment, even in circumstances wherewe could have been pardoned for deviating from it, that amongst other things earned us the respect of the world.

I am committed to ensuring that the president of a country like ours must not live in a style which is totally different from that of the masses of the people who put him in power.