Nelson Mandela
Anti-apartheid leader and President of South Africa, 1918–2013. 1 explained quote and 1 wrongly credited to them.
Said by Mandela at the launch of an educational broadcasting project. For a man whose people had been denied decent schooling under apartheid, education was a form of liberation.
Read the full explanation →An encouraging line that fits Mandela's life perfectly, but it has not been traced to anything he said or wrote. It spread online in the 2000s and especially after his death in 2013.
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About Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was a lawyer and leader of the African National Congress who spent twenty-seven years in prison for his fight against apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial segregation. Released in 1990, he negotiated the end of apartheid, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and served as South Africa’s first democratically elected president from 1994 to 1999.
Mandela is one of the most quoted people in the world, and also one of the most misquoted. Many popular sayings credited to him, including some printed on posters and in speeches by world leaders, do not appear in his speeches or writings; the Nelson Mandela Foundation keeps an archive that helps separate the real ones from the rest.
More lines by Mandela
Short quotes checked against their sources.
- “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”Statement from the dock at the Rivonia Trial, 1964