The Mind Creative DEC 2013
Mandela believed that the
boxing ring made "rank,
age, colour, and wealth
irrelevant". He wrote in his
autobiography that boxing
was a way of losing himself
in something that was not
the struggle and that after
an evening's workout, he
would often “wake up the
next
morning
feeling
strong, refreshed and
ready to take up the fight
again"
He went through a “coming
of age” ceremony at the
age of 16. In Xhosa
tradition, Mandela was put
in a group of 26 boys and
he then went through a
circumcision ceremony. At
the very moment of the
circumcision, the boys
were trained to cry out
"Ndiyindoda," ("I am a
man!"). Mandela later
wrote that despite the
ceremony, he was not
a man that day, and would not truly become one for many years.
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in
rising every time we fall.”
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes
to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his
heart.”
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