Quotes from Long Walk to Freedom

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it's lowest ones”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite... Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“لم يكن تفوقي بالمدرسة نتيجة لنبوغي بل لإصراري و تصميمي على النجاح”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“في أعماق كل إنسان حتى أكثر الناس وحشية وقسوة قدراً من الإنسانية وبإمكان كل إنسان أن يتغير إذا مالمستَ جوانب الخير في قلبه ونفسه”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“الذي يسلب إنساناً حريته يصير هو نفسه أسيراً للحقد والكراهية يعيش وراء قضبان التعصب وضيق الأفق”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“يقال إنما تعرف الأمم بسجونها،إذ ينبغي الحكم على أمة ما من خلال معاملتهالأدنى مواطنيهاوليس لأرقاهم.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“In another conversation I said, ‘Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn’t you hate them all over again?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely I did, because they’d imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn’t get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“إن المرء قد يصل في لحظة معينة إلى الإيمان بأن مصدر الظلم لم يعد في الخارج بل في داخله هو نفسه.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“في السجن تصبح الذاكرة خليلاً وعدواً في آن واحد”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“It was a useful reminder that all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and that if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“التعليم هو أعظم محرك للنضوج الشخصي.
فهو الذي يمكّن ابنة الفلاح من أن تصبح طبيبة، وابن عامل المناجم من أن يصبح رئيساً للمناجم، وابن عامل المزرعة من أن يصبح رئيساً لدولة عظمى.
إن ما يميز فرد عن آخر هو قدرته على توظيف ما عنده من إمكانيات وليس ما يُعطى من ممتلكات ومزايا.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“Although I am a gregarious person, I love solitude even more.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture. Africans of my generation—and even today—generally have both an English and an African name. Whites were either unable or unwilling to pronounce an African name, and considered it uncivilized to have one. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

“Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.”
― Nelson Mandela, quote from Long Walk to Freedom

About the author

Popular quotes

“The world resists, when you break its rules.”
― V.E. Schwab, quote from Vicious

“From day one it was like society was this violent, complicated dance and everybody had taken lessons but me. Knocked to the floor again, climbing to my feet each time, bloody and humiliated. Always met with disapproving faces, waiting for me to leave so I'd stop fucking up the party.

The wanted to push me outside, where the freaks huddled in the cold. Out there with the misfits, the broken, the glazed-eye types who can only watch as the normals enjoy their shiny new cars and careers and marriages and vacations with the kids.

The freaks spend their lives shambling around, wondering how they got left out, mumbling about conspiracy theories and bigfoot sightings. Their encounters with the world are marked by awkward conversations and stifled laughter, hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.”
― David Wong, quote from John Dies at the End

“Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Feet of Clay

“There is always something wrong with people in the country, I thought. In the comparatively few times I had ever been in the rural South I had been struck by the number of missing fingers. Offhand, I had counted around twenty, at least. There had also been several people with some form of crippling or twisting illness, and some blind or one-eyed. No adequate medical treatment, maybe. But there was something else. You’d think that farming was a healthy life, with fresh air and fresh food and plenty of exercise, but I never saw a farmer who didn’t have something wrong with him, and most of the time obviously wrong; I never saw one who was physically powerful, either. Certainly there were none like Lewis. The work with the hands must be fantastically dangerous, in all that fresh air and sunshine, I thought: the catching of an arm in a tractor part somewhere off in the middle of a field where nothing happened but that the sun blazed back more fiercely down the open mouth of one’s screams. And so many snakebites deep in the woods as one stepped over a rotten log, so many domestic animals suddenly turning and crushing one against the splintering side of a barn stall. I wanted none of it, and I didn’t want to be around where it happened either. But I was there, and there was no way for me to escape, except by water, from the country of nine-fingered people. I”
― James Dickey, quote from Deliverance

“I never understood how men could remember all those details about sports but, yet, were incapable of remembering where they set their car keys or wallet.”
― Tina Reber, quote from Love Unscripted

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.