Mandela's Way Quotes

“Conditions plus principles determine strategy.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“And that is how he would describe courage: pretending to be brave. Fearlessness is stupidity. Courage is not letting the fear defeat you.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“leadership at its most fundamental is about moving people in a certain direction—usually through changing the direction of their thinking and their actions. And the way to do that is not necessarily by charging out front and saying, “Follow me,” but by empowering or pushing others to move forward ahead of you. It is through empowering others”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“By maturity, he meant that he learned to control those more youthful impulses, not that he was no longer stung or hurt or angry. It is not that you always know what to do or how to do it, it is that you are able to tamp down the emotions and anxieties that get in the way of seeing the world as it is. You can see through them, and that will see you through.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“leadership often means having to choose between two bad options and that good men have to make decisions that have bad consequences.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“Yes, emotions may be authentic, and authenticity is a modern virtue, but one can be authentic without being unnecessarily revealing.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“The Renaissance idea of individualism never penetrated Africa like it did Europe and America. The African model of leadership is better expressed as ubuntu, the idea that people are empowered by other people, that we become our best selves through unselfish interaction with others.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“Courage is not the absence of fear, he taught me. It’s learning to overcome it.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“Unseen wounds are very painful, even more painful than the wounds you can see.” It was clear to me that he was talking about himself too.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“Trust is a foundation of leadership. We trust that a leader is honest, able, and has a vision of where to go. But trust operates on an even deeper level. We trust that a leader is who he appears to be, that the public person and the private one are the same.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“Even after emerging from prison and becoming South Africa’s first democratically elected president, he continued”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“EVEN ON A REMOTE but beautiful island, Mandela needed a place apart. A place where he could lose himself to find himself.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“truth. Some people will choose a categorical yes or no simply because they think it appears strong. But if we cultivate the habit of considering both—or even several—sides of a question, as Mandela did, of holding both good and bad in our minds, we may see solutions that would not otherwise have occurred to us. This way of thinking is demanding. Even if we remain wedded to our point of view, it requires us to put ourselves in the shoes of those with whom we disagree. That takes an effort of will, and it requires empathy and imagination. But the reward, as we can see in the case of Mandela, is something that can fairly be described as wisdom.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“That was the moment when I understood more clearly than ever before that the liberation struggle was not so much about liberating blacks from bondage, it was about liberating white people from fear.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“We tend to think of risk as physical daring, like attempting a dangerous climb, or as making a decision with an uncertain outcome, like putting our money into an investment that is not a sure thing. But Mandela believes in and takes emotional risks. He goes out on a limb and makes himself vulnerable by trusting others. We sometimes do that by confiding in others we don’t know well. Yet we rarely equate risk with trying to see what is decent, honest, and good in the people in our daily lives. “People will feel I see too much good in people,” Mandela once told me. “So it’s a criticism I have to put up with, and I’ve tried to adjust because whether it is so or not, it is something I think is profitable. It’s a good thing to assume, to act on the basis that others are men of integrity and honor, because you tend to attract integrity and honor if that”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“By behaving honorably, even to people who may not deserve it, he believes you can influence them to behave more honorably than they otherwise would. This”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“He believes that, just as pretending to be brave can lead to acts of real bravery, seeing the good in other people improves the chances that they will reveal their better selves.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“Just as pretending to be brave can become real courage, we may find that outfitting ourselves as the person we want to be brings us closer to becoming that person.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“Mandela genuinely believed in the virtues of the team, and he knew that to get the best out of his own people, he had to make sure that they partook of the glory and, even more important, that they felt they were influencing his decisions.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age

“There is nothing beneath a leader.”
― Richard Stengel, Mandela's Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age