We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.
Nelson MandelaRead
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
Interpretation
Freedom requires struggle and perseverance, often through difficult challenges.
Nelson Mandela emphasizes that the journey to freedom is not simple or straightforward. It often involves facing significant hardships and obstacles, represented here by 'the valley of the shadow of death.' However, enduring these trials is essential to ultimately achieve our highest aspirations, symbolized as reaching the 'mountaintop of our desires.'
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students about facing challenges.
We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.
What freedom am I being offered while the organization of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.
The past is a rich resource on which we can draw in order to make decisions for the future, but it does not dictate our choices. We should look back at the past and select what is good, and leave behind what is bad.
We signal that good can be achieved amongst human beings who are prepared to trust, prepared to believe in the goodness of people.
After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one's person.
I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.
Now as before, women must refuse to be meek and guileful, for truth cannot be served by dissimulation. Women who fancy that they manipulate the world by pussy power and gentle cajolery are fools. It is slavery to have to adopt such tactics.
Behind every American soldier, dozens of their countrymen tonight sleep soundly — and hundreds more in their shadow abroad will wake up alive and safe.
With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relative, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army.
Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.
...in their millenial and long-lived patience they knew quite well how, in a hundred years, or a thousand years' time, or else, perhaps, tomorrow, in an hour's time, for it was all a gamble, a million to one chance, but all the same there was a chance that if they kept on shaking their chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles would part.
To cowards what advice shall I offer? - nothing whatsoever have I to say.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.