Nelson Mandela

A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.

Nelson Mandela

A garden was one of the few thing in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a taste of freedom.

Nelson Mandela

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

Nelson Mandela

A government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it.

Nelson Mandela

A leadership commits a crime against its own people if it hesitates to sharpen its political weapons where they have become less effective.

Nelson Mandela

A new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.

Nelson Mandela

A new world will be won not by those who stand at a distance with their arms folded, but by those who are in the arena, whose garments are torn by storms and whose bodies are maimed in the course of the contest.

Nelson Mandela

A real leader uses every issue, no matter how serious and sensitive, to ensure that at the end of the debate we should emerge stronger and more united than ever before.

Nelson Mandela

A society that does not value its older people denies its roots and endangers its future. Let us strive to enhance their capacity to support themselves for as long as possible and, when they cannot do so anymore, to care for them.

Nelson Mandela

Abject poverty is demeaning, is an assault on the dignity of those that suffer it. In the end it demeans us all. It makes the freedom of all of us less meaningful.

Nelson Mandela