Anthony Sampson > Quotes

“I am what I am.........both as a result of people who respected me and helped me, and of those who did not respect me and treated me badly.

Nelson Mandela”
― Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorised Biography

“The rich feel much less need than their predecessors to account for their wealth, whether to society, to governments or to God. Their attitudes and values are not seriously challenged by anyone. The respect now shown for wealth and money-making has been the most fundamental change in Britain over four decades.”
― Anthony Sampson

“He often quoted the proverb ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,’ which he would translate as ‘A person is a person because of other people,’ or ‘You can do nothing if you don’t get the support of other people.’ This was a concept common to other rural communities around the world, but Africans would define it more sharply as a contrast to the individualism and restlessness of whites, and over the following decades ubuntu would loom large in black politics. As Archbishop Tutu defined it in 1986: ‘It refers to gentleness, to compassion, to hospitality, to openness to others, to vulnerability, to be available to others and to know that you are bound up with them in the bundle of life.’15 Mandela regarded ubuntu as part of the general philosophy of serving one’s fellow men. From his adolescence, he recalled, he was viewed as being unusually ready to see the best in others. To him this was a natural inheritance: ‘People like ourselves brought up in a rural atmosphere get used to interacting with people at an early age.’ But he conceded that, ‘It may be a combination of instinct and deliberate planning.’ In any case, it was to become a prevailing principle throughout his political career: ‘People are human beings, produced by the society in which they live. You encourage people by seeing good in them.’16”
― Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorised Biography

“I think, of course, all politicians have a sense of their own image, but he had it in an unusual extent. And, when I first knew him in the '50s, when I was living in Johannesburg, I thought it was too much. I thought he had too theatrical a sense, like he was too much of a showman, and I wasn't quite sure what lay behind it. I was quite wrong, of course, because as soon as he went—before he went to jail, when he made two great speeches, it was already clear that there was a great deal behind that showmanship.”
― Anthony Sampson