Nelson Mandela

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

Appearances matter – and remember to smile.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

Difficulties break some men but make others.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

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

Eat therefore to live, and do not live to eat.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

The public must and will be served.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Avoid popularity it has many snares and no real benefit.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.