Desmond Tutu Quotes
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As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.
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We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.
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Anything war can do, peace can do better.
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God is patient with us to become the God's children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping.
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We have an incredible capacity for the worst possible evil, all of us, it was that we also have this incredible capacity for good. And that is why we are all of us appalled when something bad happens. Because if the bad was the norm, we would just shrug our shoulders and say "well tough luck, this is how the cookie crumbles" kind of thing but none of us does that.
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The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions
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Without forgiveness, there is no future.
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People want much the same things, but they have been formed by history to have a particular perception of the other.
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The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons.
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Ultimately, suffering is always political with all kinds of justifications - there are those who justify Israel's occupation of land as being a fulfillment of what God had promised.
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Revenge has a way of corroding you, the revenger. You know it doesn't heal you.
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People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.
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Freedom is indivisible. Whites can't enjoy their separate freedoms. They spend too much time and resources defending those freedoms instead of enjoying them.
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You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.
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Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language... It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.'
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Only if we face up to our past can we regain our credibility. If we pretend that our trust is greater than it is, we will be like someone who tries to patch over a crack.
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And one day, this thing happened to me: I coughed, and the blood just came gushing out of my mouth. ... I still can't believe that that happened to me, but I sat there, and I said to God, 'Well, if it means I'm going to die, that's OK.' I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.
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In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute - a white skin.
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I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion.
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I'm so, so thrilled that [Pope Francis] is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world.
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What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?
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I think it is a good exercise to ask oneself, "How would I have wanted to be treated?"
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I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person.
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When we hear a story of the abuse of a child or the abuse of women almost all people are appalled by instances of that kind.
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To forgive is to abandon your right to pay back the predator in his own coin, but it is the loss that Liberates.
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How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?
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True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know.
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When you are in love you strive to do the things that will please your lover.
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I have struggled against tyranny. I didn't do that in order to substitute another.
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We can carry the burden of hurt throughout our lives. We can make the hurt that we have experienced the defining aspect of our stories of ourselves. That means that somebody else gets to say who we are, somebody else gets to decide how we feel, and somebody else gets to decide how we see the world. Forgiveness not only frees us from the burden of someone else's opinion of us, but it allows us the opportunity to really write a story of ourselves that we can love, enjoy, relish, and live into.
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