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What they have taught me and what I take from their lives is this real ability to go beyond yourself and to dedicate your life to the common good, to create spaces and opportunities for freedom for all.

— Graça Machel Mandela's widow, Graça Machel, says global leadership during the pandemic has been 'inadequate (2020)

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Freedom

More quotes by Graça Machel

If we are here in solidarity, with this beauty of unity, in our pain, we have to pledge to do something.

A mother in pain: Graça Machel speaks on the gender based violence and xenophobia (2026)

The role tradition has played in the relationship in the family between men and women has been detrimental to women.

Graca Machel: Traditional practices put women in positions of inferiority (2009)

Education, particularly for girls, is a catalyst for reducing child and maternal deaths and lifting people out of poverty.

We need to make the message much clearer -- that aid means saving lives, it’s not a luxury.

West must help Africa on poverty, education: Machel (2009)

Tradition has developed into practices which overtime have become beliefs which in essence they put women in a position of inferiority.

Graca Machel: Traditional practices put women in positions of inferiority (2009)

All Graça Machel quotes →

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There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Graça Machel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.