Nelson Mandela

I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

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

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?

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

The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

It is not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

The listlessness of it all, the profit off depression, the extinction of an entire species, the chlorinated connections- poisoned just to appear clean.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

I could not find the world if I searched ten years. I’ve forgotten the road by which I came.