Top 100 Quotes About Nelson Mandela
#1. The leaders who we admire who have been able to bring great change in the past - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela - they're all inspirational religious leaders and smart tacticians. It would be nice to find the Muslim Gandhi, wouldn't it?
Dennis C. Blair
#2. Whenever anybody called Nelson Mandela a saint, he would say: "If by saint you mean a sinner who is trying to be better, then I'm a saint."
Kumi Naidoo
#3. As president, I watched in wonder as Nelson Mandela had the remarkable capacity to forgive his jailers following 26 years of wrongful imprisonment - setting a powerful example of redemption and grace for us all.
George H. W. Bush
#4. 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
Michael Gallegos Borresen
#5. There were only 3 people that I wanted to meet in life, Nelson Mandela was one of them. What a life, what a journey, what a man. Thank you for passing this way! God bless your resting soul!
Tyler Perry
#6. Nelson Mandela and myself had a wonderful relationship - he was a special man and will be missed.
Donald Trump
#7. We have a revolutionary history to honor and uphold. Which was what Nelson Mandela did. He reminded us of that which we need to be reminded, over and over again, about our own best selves.
Charlie Pierce
#8. A lot of controversy over this possible invasion of Iraq. In fact, Nelson Mandela was so upset, he called Bush's dad. How embarrassing, when world leaders start calling your father.
Jay Leno
#9. One of them would definitely be the Nelson Mandela gig, when I played the tribute song for him. He was up and dancing, and he really enjoyed it. It was a really lovely occasion.
Joan Armatrading
#10. The world has lost a visionary leader, a courageous voice for justice, and a clear moral compass. By showing us that the path to freedom and human dignity lies in love, wisdom and compassion for one another, Nelson Mandela stands as an inspiration to us all.
Kofi Annan
#11. Very sad to hear about the passing of Nelson Mandela. He was a true inspiration for human rights and equality for South Africa and the reason apartheid no longer exists there. The world will never forget his capacity for forgiveness and magnanimity. RIP
Bryan Adams
#12. Of all the many leaders I have met in the course of my life, none made a deeper impression on me than Nelson Mandela. His courage, compassion, humility and wisdom were without parallel on the world stage, and he himself was an enduring source of inspiration.
Klaus Schwab
#13. I would say that as our struggles mature, they produce new ideas, new issues, and new terrains on which we engage in the quest for freedom. Like Nelson Mandela, we must be willing to embrace the long walk toward freedom.
Angela Y. Davis
#14. Why don't we have people like Thich Nhat Hanh or Marshall Rosenberg and Nelson Mandela solving violent situations in a peaceful way?
Sandra Cisneros
#15. George W. Bush in Washington decided that Nobel Peace Prize winner and ex-president Nelson Mandela could probably be taken off the U.S. list of terrorists).
Jonas Jonasson
#16. Everyone who ever did anything revolutionary was just an eighteen-year-old kid once. George Washington, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela ... Social status is just a social construct, the primary function of which is to keep regular people oppressed and rebels in line.
Matthew Quick
#17. I heard somebody say, 'Where's (Nelson) Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead. Because Saddam killed all the Mandelas.
George W. Bush, on the former South African president, who is still very much alive, Washington, D.C., Sept. 20, 2007
George W. Bush
#18. Nelson Mandela understood that social transformation and economic transformation go hand in hand.
Klaus Schwab
#19. I think there's a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.
Jody Williams
#20. Former South Africa President Nelson Mandela announced Tuesday he will begin writing his autobiography. He spent 25 years in prison before being elected to public office. In America, we do it the other way around.
Argus Hamilton
#21. Nelson Mandela was an outstanding leader and a mentor for me. I was in South Africa at the time he was released. I was in South Africa when he was inaugurated as the first president.
Gail Kelly
#22. [Nelson] Mandela was very keen not to be understood as an exceptional person.
Kumi Naidoo
#23. Nelson Mandela is physically separated from us, but his soul and spirit will never die. He belongs to the whole world because he is an icon of equality, freedom and love, the values we need all the time everywhere.
Malala Yousafzai
#24. Just look at the great Nelson Mandela. He came out of prison and saved his entire country. Some of the best people in the world have spent time in prison.
George Foreman
#25. Nelson Mandela was one of the most influential people in my life. He was my hero, my friend, and also a companion to me in our fight for the people and for world peace. Let us all continue his legacy with purpose and passion.
Pele
#26. History will remember Nelson Mandela as a
champion for human dignity and freedom, for
peace and reconciliation
William J. Clinton
#27. I have learned so much from Nelson Mandela, and he has been my leader. He is a perpetual inspiration for me and millions of others around the world.
Malala Yousafzai
#28. Nelson Mandela was not free
because of his attitude
towards life and love.
Petra Hermans
October 4, 2016
Petra Hermans
#29. Reflecting on his years in prison, Nelson Mandela wrote that there were dark moments that tested his faith in humanity, but he refused to give up.
Barack Obama
#30. Peace on earth and good will toward men - that is something we need to work on. Like Nelson Mandela, we should learn from him.
Ian Astbury
#31. Nelson Mandela also spoke about how, as a human being, he's made mistakes.
Kumi Naidoo
#32. I think even though he [Nelson Mandela] was feted and praised as he was, he always was at pains to say, I'm a human being.
Kumi Naidoo
#33. What made Nelson Mandela great, was precisely what made him human. We saw in him, what we seek in ourselves.
Jacob Zuma
#34. As a world leader who refused to accept injustice, Nelson Mandela's courage helped change our entire world
Salil Shetty
#35. It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.
Desmond Tutu
#36. Don't raise your voice, improve your argument.
[Address at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa, 23 November 2004]
Desmond Tutu
#37. I wrote this book for the Nelson Mandela's of our communities who are willing to stand up for change and people who are oppressed or suppressed from fulfilling their life's purpose
Sahndra Fon Dufe
#38. It reaffirmed my long-held belief that education was the enemy of prejudice. ========== The Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela)
Anonymous
#39. Nelson Mandela was a man of incomparable honor, unconquerable strength, and unyielding resolve
a saint to many, a hero to all who treasure liberty, freedom and the dignity of humankind.
Morgan Freeman
#40. I'm inspired by people like Nelson Mandela. Can you imagine - you know how racist America was back then - imagine how racism was in South Africa when he had to stand up and say what he had to say. That's bravery beyond comprehension.
Nas
#41. Afrikaans was the language of the white minority in South Africa, and the forced learning of it created resentment among blacks. Even so, Nelson Mandela made it a point to learn this language in prison in anticipation that it would help him lead the whole of South Africa.
Robert Lane Greene
#42. Nelson Mandela wrote, "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
Brene Brown
#43. Nelson Mandela can rot in prison until he dies or I die, whichever takes longer.
P. W. Botha
#44. One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Ganhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.
Jack Canfield
#45. I knew that one movie could either kill my career or give birth to it. It's the same thing with Nelson. If you fail at Nelson [movie about nelson Mandela], you don't get to comeback and say, 'Well, I was trying. Let me do it again.' There are no re-takes.
Terrence Howard
#46. My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I'm trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.
Nina Simone
#47. Around the world, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela
what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term. It takes more than a single president. It takes more than a single individual.
Barack Obama
#48. It was a hallmark of Nelson Mandela's leadership that being open to change made him appear not weaker, but even stronger.
Klaus Schwab
#49. The world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us.
Barack Obama
#50. I used to do my Nelson Mandela voice to blag restaurant tables in Cape Town. It rarely worked. Now what a great city that is.
Rory Bremner
#51. Nelson Mandela was in jail when I was really young, and Winnie Mandela was one of the biggest faces of the movement. In South Africa we have a common phrase - it's like a chant in the street and at rallies: "Wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo." Which means, "You strike a woman, you strike a rock."
Trevor Noah
#52. Like you do about Nelson Mandela, you can't help feeling the guy's a good man.
Ralph Steadman
#53. I met Nelson Mandela, and I really didn't know what to say. It was years ago at a benefit. I was just in awe of this man because of what he'd done.
Robin Williams
#54. Nelson Mandela is my hero outside of football. I was fortunate enough to meet him a couple of times. He was really clued up on his football and he knew me, so that was just unbelievable. It really stuck with me.
Ryan Giggs
#55. Nelson Mandela was just a human being, a person like other people, and everyone relaxed. Within a minute, that sort of thing about the leader and the lead, the gap was closed, and that's a rare thing.
Kumi Naidoo
#56. I like people who are minimalist with their words. Jack Nicholson thinks a lot then says something, and it's always spot on. Nelson Mandela is the same.
David A. Stewart
#57. Mind you, you don't get albums written about really good people like Gandhi or Nelson Mandela, do you? Good people's places in Heaven may be assured, but nobody's going to have a chart-topping album full of songs about someone's good deeds.
Mitch Winehouse
#58. Nelson Mandela was a towering figure in our time; a legend in life and now in death - a true global hero
David Cameron
#59. Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.
Toni Morrison
#61. Nelson Mandela will always be the face of South Africa. The traveler passing through the country will see Mandela's face almost everywhere he looks. Truly, the man is omnipresent.
Henry Rollins
#62. Nelson Mandela said: 'It always seems impossible until it's done.' Peace is possible.
John Bonifaz
#63. Those 10000 days in prison, but this never made Nelson Mandela to leave what he was doing. He loved what he did and he would repeat to again if he had been arrested again and imprisoned again! He has his bigger picture in view!
Israelmore Ayivor
#64. My greatest hero is Nelson Mandela. What a man. Incarcerated for 25 years, he was released in 1990 and he hasn't reoffended. I think he's going straight, which shows you prison does work.
Ricky Gervais
#65. When Nelson Mandela walked free, the world sang with joy. Ever since, South Africa has stood as a beacon of hope for Africa.
Ban Ki-moon
#66. Nelson Mandela is a leader Barack Obama should try to emulate ...
He could start by spending 27 years in prison.
Don Imus
#67. I've tended to lean more toward the Dalai Lama and people like Russell Means who have been my political and spiritual North Stars, but I certainly regard Nelson Mandela with great respect and humility.
Ian Astbury
#68. I am what I am.........both as a result of people who respected me and helped me, and of those who did not respect me and treated me badly.
Nelson Mandela
Anthony Sampson
#69. Being black and speaking properly are not mutually exclusive. My father was an African, and he spoke beautifully at home. Nelson Mandela speaks beautifully. Should Mandela put his hat on backwards and say, 'Yo, homey, this is Nelson. Yo, Winnie, yo, this is def'?
Franklyn Ajaye
#70. President Obama compared himself to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in the struggle to bring about change. The comparison is flawed. They spent years in jail before taking political power, while politicians from Chicago do it the other way around.
Argus Hamilton
#71. As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.
Jackson Browne
#72. Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela - who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.
Rush Limbaugh
#73. I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.
Bono
#74. When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I'd been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality.
Ian McKellen
#75. This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.
Nina Simone
#76. Consider Nelson Mandela who related; "When I had been released from prison and came home to my family, I went to embrace my daughter. She pushed me away. "You may be the father of the nation, but are no father to me." How is it, there are children who
Suzann Dodd
#77. From time to time, you have seminal personalities who really change the way the world sees itself - people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Warren Buffett is that kind of person in the business world.
Guy Spier
#78. I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive - the power is in love and forgiveness.
Dick Gephardt
#79. When the image of Nelson Mandela may be more familiar to us than the face of our next-door neighbour, something has changed in the nature of our everyday experience.
Anthony Giddens
#80. I didn't survive, I prepared." Nelson Mandela's answer when Tony asked him, "Sir, how did you survive all those years in prison?
Timothy Ferriss
#81. What an honor it was to step into the shoes of Nelson Mandela and portray a man who defied odds, broke down barriers, and championed human rights before the eyes of the world.
Idris Elba
#82. The charismatic portrait of the modern leadership looks nothing like Fidel Castro. It is a faceless portrait that epitomizes the toughness of Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela's charisma, and the most compassionate heart of Mother Theresa.
Anthony Obi Ogbo
#83. Unsurprisingly, Nelson Mandela had and still has many detractors.
Henry Rollins
#84. Nelson Mandela once said "I can't help it if the ladies take note of me; I'm not going to protest."
Kumi Naidoo
#85. One of the things that I noticed with my own eyes was Nelson Mandela ability to engage with kings and queens and heads of state on the one hand, and his ability to engage with ordinary people, equally comfortably.
Kumi Naidoo
#86. It was spine tingling, actually, when you saw how people kept saying, "Release Nelson Mandela," and meaning really, "Release all of our political prisoners."
Desmond Tutu
#87. When you are young and strong ... you can stay alive on your hatred" ... but realized later "They can take everything from me except my mind and heart"
Nelson Mandela from Long Walk to Freedom
Nelson Mandela
#88. Nelson Mandela is awe inspiring - a person who really sacrificed for what he believed in. I feel truly humbled by him.
Annie Lennox
#89. In Durban, where I was born and grew up, and all over Africa, Nelson Mandela was a hero! Now he is a hero to the world.
Kumi Naidoo
#90. Of course, Nelson Mandela, everybody knows Nelson Mandela. I mean, he's a great gift not only for Africa but for the whole world, actually. But do not expect everybody to be a Nelson Mandela.
Mo Ibrahim
#91. Nelson Mandela said it this way, "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.
Christopher Marco
#92. Nelson Mandela sat in a South African prison for 27 years. He was nonviolent. He negotiated his way out of jail. His honor and suffering of 27 years in a South African prison is really ultimately what brought about the freedom of South Africa. That is nonviolence.
Coretta Scott King
#93. We're trained to see the world in terms of charismatic organizations and charismatic people. That's who we look to for leadership and change, for transformation. We're awaiting the next J.F.K., the next Martin Luther King, the next Gandhi, the next Nelson Mandela.
Paul Hawken
#94. Leaving golf aside for the moment, I'd choose Roger Federer as a sporting role model, Muhammad Ali for a sporting and non-sporting role model and Nelson Mandela as a true and lasting inspiration.
Rory McIlroy
#95. Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.
Desmond Tutu
#96. For a revolution is not just a question of pulling a trigger; its purpose is to create a fair just society
Nelson Mandela
#97. Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
Nelson Mandela
#98. It is not the kings and generals that make history, but the masses of the people.
Nelson Mandela
#99. Keep your friends close - and your rivals even closer.
Nelson Mandela
#100. I came to accept that I have no right whatsoever to judge others in terms of my own customs, however much I may be proud of such customs.
Nelson Mandela
