Nelson Mandela Quotes

The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim, because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending.

If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.

In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.

You have a limited time to stay on earth. You must try to use that period for the purpose of transforming your country into what you desire it to be: a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist country. And that is a great task.

If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.

Those social behaviors which automatically preclude the building of a democratic world must go - every social limitation of human beings in terms of heredity, whether it be of race, or sex, or class. Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face.

... we believe in the vocation of communion and participation of our people, who day to day awaken to their political conscience and express their desire for change and profound democratization of society. A change based on justice, built with love, and which will bring us the most anxiously desired fruits of peace.

No matter what happens, nothing can prevent the historical process by which society demands freedom and democracy.

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

All over this world people are standing up for freedom.

Well, it all began with Democracy. Before we had the vote all the power was in the hands of rich people. If you had money you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet...to the ballot.

[Students for a Democratic Society] it's a social democratic program.

The system concedes nothing without demand, for it formulates its very method of operation on the basis that the ignorant will learn to know, the child will grow into an adult and therefore demands will begin to be made. It gears itself to resist demands in whatever way it sees fit.

To end slavery, you must overcome the mental and physical inertia of the masses and quicken their intelligence and creative faculty.

The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.

I think that most people don't think in terms of an American revolution, they think in terms of a Russian revolution, or even a Ukrainian revolution. But the idea of an American revolution does not occur to most people. And when I came down to the movement milieu seventy-five years ago, the black movement was just starting, and the war in Europe had brought into being the "Double V for Victory" [campaign]: the idea was that we ought to win democracy abroad with democracy at home. And that was the beginning of an American revolution, and most people don't recognize that.

I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.

The slave and those whose present life is miserable and who can find no consolation in the heavens are assured that at least the future belongs to them. The future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves.

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.

Power cedes nothing without a demand.

Let us get on with creating the democratic and pluralistic society that we say we are.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

To see an African-American elected president means that this country is really finally coming full circle from the birth defect of slavery.

I believe that women will lead the democracy movement.

I hope that young people especially will begin to have a better understanding of slavery and its effects, which are still evident today, to understand those parallels and, from there, begin ta be a part of the wave of hope to change things for the better.