Quote

When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.

Desmond Tutu

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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Table
Tottering
Edges
Blamed
Tables
Warn
Ground
Pile
South
Crash
Happens
Cups
Edge
Africa

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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.
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I'm coming to believe more and more in the truth that everything we do has consequences. A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear.
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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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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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The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses.
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As a Christian, I believe in the sanctity of life and that death is a part of life.
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Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction we are already feeling the effects.
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Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.
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In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.
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My vote is my secret.
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All people would really want peace and all would want to be sure that they would not be taken advantage of.
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Every situation of justice is an occasion where someone is being humiliated and they want to restore their dignity. They think, I am a human being and I may not be able to defeat these people or destroy them, but I will hit out at them, because I am not a thing, I am human.
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Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.
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You have seen after Katrina just what failures there are in American Society.
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We get most upset with those we love because they are close to us and we know that they are aware of our weaknesses. . . If only we could learn to live with our inadequacies, our frailties, our vulnerabilities, we would not need to try so hard to push away those who really know us.
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Once you have women liberated, it's amazing how many other problems get resolved--pover ty, education, health. Women are the key in any community.
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The moment our dignity is undermined, we get up in arms and want to see our dignity restored - especially if we are humiliated.
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All of us experience fear, but when we confront and acknowledge it, we are able to turn it into courage. Being courageous does not mean never being scared it means acting as you know you must even though you are undeniably afraid.
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Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.
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It is quite exhilarating to speak about a God who has an incredible bias, a notorious bias in favor of the downtrodden. You look at Exodus and the Israelites' escape from a bottomless pit. God is not evenhanded. God is biased up to his eyebrows.
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