Top 125 Nelson Quotes

I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive – the power is in love and forgiveness.

It was a hallmark of Nelson Mandela’s leadership that being open to change made him appear not weaker, but even stronger.

Whenever I am asked who I admire most among the leaders I have met, I have no hesitation in naming Nelson Mandela.

A lot of people didn’t know I was doing Broadway. They thought I was one of those guys who was famous for being famous. I was the one who sat next to Charles Nelson Reilly and said funny things.

Who have I been starstruck by in real life? One of the weirdest ones was, when we were making ‘Cry-Baby,’ David Nelson from ‘The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet.’ I couldn’t believe he was sitting in my living room. Certainly Patricia Hearst. Tab Hunter. A lot of the stars I’ve worked with, when I first got them.

If I win gold, I will dedicate it to Nelson Mandela. He is a hero in South Africa, and everything I do, I do for him.

I’d just gotten into Los Angeles from Texas, where I live, and the phone rang and it was the guy calling about the Willie Nelson video. I was totally excited about it.

Favorite country singer of all time… Hank Williams… Well, then there’s Willie Nelson. Can I have three? I can’t do one. Then if I have three, I’ll need five. Hank Williams for sure. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I’d been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality.

We have a revolutionary history to honor and uphold. Which was what Nelson Mandela did. He reminded us of that which we need to be reminded, over and over again, about our own best selves.

Nelson was locked up on Robben Island, and wives like me had been warned we would bring our husbands home as corpses from that place. But I always believed he would be released. It was my duty to have a home ready for us.

Farm Aid was started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews as a concert to support small local farms in the U.S.

The only thing that’s going to be more epic than Roy Nelson fighting Mark Hunt is Roy Nelson fighting for the belt. Those are two fights that I know fans want to see.

Of course, Nelson Mandela, everybody knows Nelson Mandela. I mean, he’s a great gift not only for Africa but for the whole world, actually. But do not expect everybody to be a Nelson Mandela.

Prince Rogers Nelson was the most gifted artist of the rock era. Not the greatest genius – just the most musical in the broadest sense.

Nelson Riddle was really something. Just something else.

Nelson Mandela understood that social transformation and economic transformation go hand in hand.

A person like Roy Nelson, a lot of people can relate to him. A lot of Americans look like him, especially where I come from in the South.

Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It’s truly unbelievable.

On ‘Half Nelson,’ I was credited as the director, we both co-wrote it and Anna was the producer. We didn’t know too many directing teams working at the time except the Coen brothers and that seemed to be the model, and people always know that they’re a team, whether the credit reflected that or not.

Willie Nelson is a true champion. He pushed me to the limit where I had to figure out what punches to throw. But I put the pieces of the puzzle together and got the knockout, baby.

I was a Labour Party man but I found myself to the left of the Labour party in Nelson, militant as that was. I came to London and in a few months I was a Trotskyist.

I have learned so much from Nelson Mandela, and he has been my leader. He is a perpetual inspiration for me and millions of others around the world.

I think there’s a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.

I’m obsessed with Maggie Nelson’s work.

Ever since Willie Nelson brought rednecks into an alliance with hippies back in the psychedelic ’70s, Austin has milked its quirky libertarian spirit for a worldwide bonanza of free publicity.

I think power will do anything to survive and one of its main techniques is the rule of exceptions. So it makes an exception out of people and we worship them, whether that’s Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. These people become beatified beyond recognition.

Nelson Mandela saw the potential of Africa and dedicated his life to changing the world in which we live while inspiring a movement towards social justice, peace and equal human rights.

Country music tends to be so sentimental and homespun, it’s easy to stumble into self-parody, but Haggard has brought a freshness to the themes that places him alongside Hank Williams and Willie Nelson as one of the greatest country music writers.

With ‘Half Nelson’ we had a little bit more leeway to let the political be more present, because he was a social-studies teacher and this was what he was teaching the kids, so we’d have those direct-to-camera addresses.

If Willie Nelson had been Rosa Parks, there never would have been a civil rights movement in this country, because he refuses to leave the back of the bus.

In 2012, the city of Austin erected an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Willie Nelson in the heart of the business district. Schoolchildren, churchgoers, tourists, slackers, conventioneers, tech geeks – everybody, it seems – now congregate around this ponytailed shrine to outlaw country.

We want Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa to know that we will stand shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, until apartheid is eradicated.

You can call Roy Nelson a wrestler, but he’s never fought a dynamic, explosive wrestler.

It must be very strange to live in the world of Willie Nelson or Bruce Springsteen or Pearl Jam. I don’t know what kind of handle they have on their own loss of talent.

In 1990 there were about 300 scripts being written demanding the release of Nelson Mandela. And suddenly we watched Mandela walking out of prison. So those scripts had to be destroyed.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

Steve Earle had a mainstream career. Dwight Yoakam had a mainstream career. Willie Nelson did. But they always made good music, they always stuck to who they were. They weren’t relying on radio like a lot of people are in Nashville.

Nelson Mandela’s contribution to the people of South Africa has been immeasurable and I look forward to helping with his work all over the country.

I laughed at Willie Nelson, wondering why he spends all his life on that tour bus. And I look at myself, and I’m sitting in airplanes half the time.

Audiences won’t buy an Ozzie Nelson walking and talking around about Rickie’s new bicycle.

I’d follow Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson anywhere.

To be a philanthropist, you don’t have to be Nelson Mandela. You just have to look around you and ask, ‘What little bit can I do? Whose life can I touch?’

It’s like Willie Nelson. You’re an artist and you have different styles inside of you.

And Barry Levinson is insanely funny. I don’t know if you know this, not everyone does, but he and Craig T. Nelson were a comedy team back in the coffeehouse days of the late ’60s.

Unsurprisingly, Nelson Mandela had and still has many detractors.

Now, I know you expected me to say that, well, I just kick back in the rocking chair, fished a little bit, listened to Willie Nelson tapes and watched old baseball games on the Classic Sports network. And, tell you the truth, I have done that for maybe about five total minutes.

Bill Nelson has demonstrated that he is a rubber stamp for the Obama administration and he’s out of touch with the solution that we need to implement in order to get America back on the right track.

You never hear a country-western station saying ‘We have old school artist Willie Nelson in the house.’ They say ‘We have the legendary Willie Nelson.’

There may never be another Madiba. But instead of waiting for the next Nelson Mandela to emerge, those whom he universally inspired are now looking to themselves and each other to build their own dream together.

After ‘Homeland,’ I was offered a lot of very authoritarian, square, angry boss types, but I wanted to do something different. Casting directors are surprised when they look at my CV and see all the work I’ve done, from Shakespeare to playing Nelson Mandela.

Working with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson takes you up another level.

It’s hard not to question whether the harsh verdict of Winnie Mandela is a reflection of discomfort with women warriors or, more broadly, with the militant ethos that ultimately became a foil for the popularized representation of Nelson Mandela as the open-armed father of a non-racial nation.