Quotes from Nelson Mandela

And when we did come out [of prison], my children said, "We thought we had a father and one day he'd come back. But to our dismay, our father came back and he left us alone because he has now become the father of the nation.

Prison was a kind of crucible which tested a man's character. Some men, under pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.

Let freedom reign.

I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion. I always remember the regent's axiom: a leader, he said is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, to realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation.

His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life.

I waited with some anxiety, and suddenly, filling out the glass on the other side of the window was Winnie's lovely face. Winnie always dressed up for prison visits, and tried to wear something new and elegant. It was tremendously frustrating not to be able to touch me wife, to speak tenderly to her, to have a private moment together.

It is a simple tale, but its message is an enduring one: virtue and generosity will be rewarded in ways that one cannot know.

Lay a lost and delightful world, the world of my childhood, the world of sweet and irresponsible days at Qunu and Mqhekezweni. Now I was a man, and I would never again play thinti, or steal maize, or drink milk from a cow's udder.

In confidence we lay our cause before the whole world. Whether we win or whether we die, freedom will rise in Africa like the sun from the morning clouds.

A philosopher once noted that something is odd if a person is not liberal when he is young and conservative when he is old.

The struggle is my life.