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As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

Desmond Tutu

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Desmond Tutu
Age: 92
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Horrendous
Atrocities
Extraordinary
Capacity
Beings
Evil
Human
Humans
Perpetrate

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life.
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To remain neutral in situations of injustice is to be complicit in that injustice.
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Beware when you take on the Church of God. Others have tried and have bitten the dust.
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Now that they talk about Islam as being a violent faith, when you look at the history of Christendom, the Crusades and the many wars of religion that were fought, the cruelty of Christians in burning what they believed to be witches and burning heretics, and then very recently they were responsible for the Holocaust... it was Christians.
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I've often been a little concerned by people who say they are color-blind, people who claim, in some ways, not to be aware of race, and I hope that those who will be looking for a vision of the future will be a little more honest, and say race actually does matter.
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We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side.
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In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.
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I can't control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.
Desmond Tutu
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It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.
Desmond Tutu
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Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously...drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens our entire existence.
Desmond Tutu
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When a chap is in love, he will go out in all kinds of weather to keep an appointment with his beloved. Love can be demanding, in fact more demanding than law. It has its own imperatives - think of a mother sitting by the bedside of a sick child through the night, impelled only by love. Nothing is too much trouble for love.
Desmond Tutu
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Forgiveness and reconciliation are not just ethereal, spiritual, other-worldly activities. They have to do with the real world. They are realpolitik, because in a very real sense, without forgiveness, there is no future.
Desmond Tutu
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True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute.
Desmond Tutu
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We need other human beings in order to be human.
Desmond Tutu
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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.
Desmond Tutu
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Peace without justice is an impossibility.
Desmond Tutu
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If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.
Desmond Tutu
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Of course, you've got to reckon with the burden of the past. You can't just easily dismiss it. It is a legacy and often you have to carry an albatross. And it won't happen until people are able to have a certain level of trust and try to speak to each other, not as caricatures but as people.
Desmond Tutu
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We can enjoy a self-assurance that doesn't depend on the state of things outside ourselves, be it downturns or booms or whatever.
Desmond Tutu
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Human beings are fundamentally good.
Desmond Tutu