# Nelson Mandela's most famous quotes (and one that isn't his)

From the Rivonia trial to Long Walk to Freedom: Nelson Mandela's words with their source (speeches, letters and memoirs), plus the famous 'our deepest fear' passage, which is actually by Marianne Williamson.

- 23 votes · 13 items
- Sep 29, 2019 · monica_viajera
- https://even.best/en/l/4643/nelson-mandela-s-most-famous-quotes-and-one-that-isn-t-his

## Top 13

1. **Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts.** (3 · ▲4 ▼1) — Refusing the government's conditional release offer, 1985.
2. **For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Long Walk to Freedom (1995).
3. **A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Long Walk to Freedom (1995).
4. **It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Statement from the dock at the Rivonia trial, 20 April 1964.
5. **No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Long Walk to Freedom (1995).
6. **What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Walter Sisulu's 90th birthday, 2002.
7. **I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Long Walk to Freedom (1995).
8. **If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Long Walk to Freedom (1995).
9. **The authorities liked to say that we received a balanced diet; it was indeed balanced — between the unpalatable and the inedible.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Long Walk to Freedom (1995), on the food on Robben Island.
10. **The time for the healing of the wounds has come.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Inaugural address as president, 10 May 1994.
11. **Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Launch of the Mindset Network, 2003.
12. **Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Misattributed: it is not in his inaugural speech; it is by Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love (1992).
13. **In my country we go to prison first and then become President.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Long Walk to Freedom (1995).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.