Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

"I am no angel. I am reality."

"The struggle is my life."

"I have the power to make history."

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it."

"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again."

"A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones."

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

"I am fundamentally an optimist."

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

"I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you."

"Difficulties break some men but make others."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence is an act of rebellion."

"I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun."

"May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."

"Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward."

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."

"The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

"I raise up my voice—not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard."

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."

"Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."

"True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past."

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time."

"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."

"When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest assured that he has lived his life."

"The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.'"

"I learned that behind every person is a story."