Nelson Mandela Quotes

One of the benefits of a properly functioning democracy is minority rights and majority rule.

I think 'one man, one vote,' just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise. There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now, a minority, and they need and have a right to demand a protection of their rights.

Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.

A man may be voted a bore or shunned as a pest, and yet he must be accorded the rights to which he is entitled by virtue of being a representative of the people.

The right to vote is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in the struggle for civil rights.

How can people in other countries who are trying to grasp our plan of democracy avoid stumbling over our logic when we deny the first steps in democracy to our women?

You have fewer rights because you are a minority. Absolutely, that’s how democracy works.

We must have our freedom now. We must have the right to vote. We must have equal protection of the law.

One cannot have a trade union or a democratic election without freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby people choose and remove their rulers, there is no method of securing human rights against the state. No democracy without human rights, no human rights without democracy, and no trade union rights without either. That is our belief; that is our creed.

I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.

Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.

If you give up on democracy, you might as well give up on everything.

The Russian people deserve free and fair elections. They deserve to have a democracy.

I insist that people - wherever they live - have their rights and they must be able to fight for them.

When I went to law school, nobody heard of civil rights.

For countries to succeed, for democracies to succeed, the women and men in those countries need to be free. Women and men need to know their rights.

What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that's the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand.

Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.

People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others.

We are here to advance the cause of women and to advance the cause of democracy and to make it absolutely clear that the two are inseparable.

The respect for human rights is one of the most significant advantages of a free and democratic nation in the peaceful struggle for influence, and we should use this good weapon as effectively as possible.

The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.

Talk loud enough about human rights and it gives the impression of democracy at work, justice at work. There was a time when the United States waged war to topple democracies, because back then democracy was a threat to the Free Market. Countries were nationalising their resources, protecting their markets.... So then, real democracies were being toppled. They were toppled in Iran, they were toppled all across Latin America, Chile.

America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.