It might not strike you as a significant date but July 18 is Nelson Mandela Day, and to commemorate one of the most influential people in recent history, we’ve compiled a list of the prisoner-cum-South African President’s most insightful quotes.
It always seems impossible until it's done.
This is a pretty meaningful sentence considering Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, and while this must have felt like an eternity, his time behind bars eventually came to an end.
There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
There is no truer personification of this statement than Mandela himself, who spent his life championing for the betterment of other people, regardless of the consequences.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
It’s easy to see how this would have been applicable to Mandela during his years in prison but also on all the occasions he spoke out publicly, knowing full well the powerful people he was going to upset.
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
This is probably the most abstract of the five quotes included in this list and represents not only the value of understanding the people you’re trying to communicate with, but the importance of identity in language.
The greatest glory in living lies is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Perhaps the most appropriate of all the Mandela quotes. No matter how many setbacks he faced, even the decades he was imprisoned, he continued to fight for what he believed in.
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