We owe our children β the most vulnerable citizens in any society β a life free from violence and fear.
Nelson MandelaRead
If you are negotiating you must do so in a spirit of reconciliation, not from the point of view of issuing ultimatums.
Interpretation
Negotiation should focus on understanding and healing rather than creating conflict through demands.
In this quote, Nelson Mandela emphasizes the importance of approaching negotiations with a mindset aimed at reconciliation. Rather than adopting a confrontational stance that involves issuing ultimatums, one should strive for mutual understanding and cooperation, leading to more productive and harmonious outcomes.
In practice
In a business meeting discussing contract terms, one could use this quote to encourage a collaborative atmosphere.
We owe our children β the most vulnerable citizens in any society β 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.
And lips say βGod be pitiful,β Who ne'er said βGod be praised.β
No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichΓ©s and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.
This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.
The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act.
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.