Quotes from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation

John Carlin ·  288 pages

Rating: (3.5K votes)


“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, the power to unite people that little else has...It is more powerful in govenments in breaking down racial barriers.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation


“Your freedom and mine cannot be seperated”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation


“Should a black woman carrying her "madam's" white baby travel in the "whites only" or the "nonwhites" section of the train? Or would a Japanese visitor who used a "whites only" public toilet be breaking the law? Or what was a bus conductor to do when he ordered a brown-skinned passanger to get off a whites-only bus and the passanger refused, insisting that he was a white man with a deep suntan?”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation


“Most important of all, Mandela stated that the way to a negotiated solution lay in a simple-sounding formula: reconciling white fears with black aspirations.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation


“Having won over his own people—in itself no mean feat, for they were a disparate bunch, drawn from all manner of creeds, colors, and tribes—he then went out and won over the enemy.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation



“This was the moment when I understood more clearly than ever before that the liberation struggle of our people was not so much about liberating blacks from bondage,” Sexwale said, picking up on the core lesson he had learned from Mandela in prison, “but more so, it was about liberating white people from fear. And there it was. ‘Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!’ Fear melting away.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation


“I meant “tribalism” in the widest sense of the word, as applied to race, religion, nationalism, or politics. George Orwell defined it as that “habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation


About the author

John Carlin
Born place: in London, The United Kingdom
Born date May 12, 1956
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.”
― Dan Brown, quote from Angels & Demons - Malaikat dan Iblis


“Only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly


“There are some people in life that you can vent to, or pour out sadness to, or voice frustration to, and they readily and willingly absorb it for the sole purpose of ridding you of it. They're the same people who can immediately replace that negativity with their light. Their presence gives you the power to purge the bad and embrace the good. It's rare. I've only known a few people in my life who are that way. Now I know one more.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Franco


“It's a lucky man, a very lucky man, who is committed to what he believes, who has stifled intellectual detachment and can relax in the luxury of his emotions - like a tipsy traveller resting for the night at wayside inn.”
― Alexander Pushkin, quote from Evžen Oněgin


“Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings


Interesting books

18 Things
(0.9K)
18 Things
by Jamie Ayres
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
(9.4K)
Highly Illogical Behavior
(10.2K)
Highly Illogical Beh...
by John Corey Whaley
The Girl in 6E
(13.7K)
The Girl in 6E
by A.R. Torre
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
(4.4K)
War Is a Force That...
by Chris Hedges
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
(5.9K)
Origins: Fourteen Bi...
by Neil deGrasse Tyson

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.