Quotes About Freedom

As Chief Luthuli said, 'When the women begin to take an active part in the struggle, no power on earth can stop us from achieving freedom in our lifetime.

No matter what I suffered in my pursuit of freedom, I always took strength from the fact that I was fighting with and for my own people. Bram was a free man who fought against his own people to ensure the freedom of others

When the women begin to take an active part in the struggle, no power on earth can stop us from achieving freedom in our lifetime.

No era la falta de oportunidades lo que limitaba a mi pueblo, sino la falta de oportunidades.

grievance into a succinct and pithy phrase, while mobilizing the people to combat it. Our slogan

I was the symbol of justice in the court of the oppressor, the representative of the great ideals of freedom,

To overthrow oppression has been sanctioned by humanity and is the highest aspiration

My bans extended to meetings of all kinds, not only political ones. I could not, for example, attend my son's birthday party. I was prohibited from talking to more than one person at a time. This was part of a systematic effort by the government to silence, persecute and immobilize the leaders of those fighting apartheid and was the first of a series of bans on me that continued with brief intervals of freedom until the time I was deprived of all freedom some years later.

after years of imprisonment, physical and emotional abuse, and separation from his family, Mandela said, "I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things. Those things I still had control over. And I decided not to give them away." So Mandela's story is really the story of those two things he never gave away: his brilliant mind, and his great heart.

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 certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.

The lesson I took away from the campaign was that in the end, we had no alternative to armed and violent resistance. Over and over again, we had used all the nonviolent weapons in our arsenal—speeches, deputations, threats, marches, strikes, stay-aways, voluntary imprisonment—all to no avail,

apartheid turned many otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals.

it is always the oppressor, not the oppressed, who dictates the form of the struggle.

Se dice que nadie conoce realmente un país hasta haber pasado por sus cárceles. No se debe juzgar a una nación por cómo trata a sus miembros más encumbrados, sino por cómo trata a los más humildes.

The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. 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. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

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.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

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.

Freedom can never be taken for granted. Each generation must safeguard it and extend it. Your parents and elders sacrificed much so that you should have freedom without suffering what they did. Use this precious right to ensure that the darkness of the past never return.

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones – and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

He hated white oppression and white domination, not white people themselves.

Sólo la educación de las masas, puede liberar al pueblo. Un hombre educado no puede ser oprimido, si es capaz de pensar por sí mismo.