Nelson Mandela

It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

I am the captain of my soul.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

You can tell a lot about a person by listening to the way they talk about someone they once loved.

Wake up, you’ve been sleeping. Take up your bed and walk. Stop blaming other people. Oh, it’s nobody else’s fault.

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

Failure is success if we learn from it.