Quotes about Resilience

Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.

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

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.

He makes the basic point that it is not so much the disability one suffers from that matters but one's attitude to it. The man who says: I will conquer this illness & live a happy life, is already halfway through to victory.

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

Honour belongs to those who never forsake the truth even when things seem dark and grim, who try over and over again, who are never discouraged by insults, humiliation and even defeat.

Prison was a kind of crucible which tested a man's character. Some men, under pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.

His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life.

I waited with some anxiety, and suddenly, filling out the glass on the other side of the window was Winnie's lovely face. Winnie always dressed up for prison visits, and tried to wear something new and elegant. It was tremendously frustrating not to be able to touch me wife, to speak tenderly to her, to have a private moment together.

The struggle is my life.

I never lose. I either win or I learn.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people.