“These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted together in defense of justice and a common human decency.”
1990s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1993)
Context: I am also here today as a representative of the millions of people across the globe, the anti-apartheid movement, the governments and organisations that joined with us, not to fight against South Africa as a country or any of its peoples, but to oppose an inhuman system and sue for a speedy end to the apartheid crime against humanity.
These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted together in defense of justice and a common human decency.
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Nelson Mandela 143
President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist 1918–2013Related quotes
Quoted in: Richard Roud, Godard, introduction (1967, repr. 1970).
Source: Fortunatus the Pessimist (1892), Fortunatus in Act I, sc. ii; p. 15.
Furchtbares hat die Menschheit sich antun müssen, bis das Selbst, der identische, zweckgerichtete, männliche Charakter des Menschen geschaffen war, und etwas davon wird noch in jeder Kindheit wiederholt.
E. Jephcott, trans., p. 26
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)
V. D. Savarkar, quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 (2019)
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 3; Variant translation: Never do any enemy a small injury for they are like a snake which is half beaten and it will strike back the first chance it gets.
“Travertine and all stone of that class can stand injury”
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VII, Sec. 2
Context: Travertine and all stone of that class can stand injury whether from a heavy load laid upon it or from the weather; exposure to fire, however, it cannot bear, but splits and cracks to pieces at once. This is because in its natural composition there is but little moisture and not much of the earthy, but a great deal of air and of fire. Therefore, it is not only without the earthy and watery elements, but when fire, expelling the air from it by the operation and force of heat, penetrates into its inmost parts and occupies the empty spaces of the fissures there comes a great glow and the stone is made to burn as fiercely as do the particles of fire itself.
Book 2, Chapter 2 “In Which Old Acquaintances Are Resumed and New Agreements Reached” (p. 226)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
“Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.”
Source: (1932), p.25
Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals