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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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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Respond
Control
Happens

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.
Desmond Tutu
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Even the worst dictator, there is not a single one of them who would say Oh yes, I violate human rights. They all claim oh no, we respect human rights even when they are doing the most egregious things.
Desmond Tutu
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If I diminish you, I diminish myself
Desmond Tutu
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Without forgiveness, there is no future.
Desmond Tutu
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It is for real that injustice and oppression will not have the last word. There was a time when Hitler looked like he was going to vanquish all of Europe, and where is he now?
Desmond Tutu
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If forgiving depended on the culprit owning up, then the victim would always be at the mercy of the perpetrator. The victim would be bound in the shackles of victimhood.
Desmond Tutu
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Do your little bit of good where you are.
Desmond Tutu
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I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.
Desmond Tutu
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It's a fantastic thing, a very simple idea. Irrespective of your politics, of your culture, of your race, of your whatever, hierdie ding doen ons saam...Here is one thing that can unite us irrespective of all of the things that are trying to tear us apart.
Desmond Tutu
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God hopes that we are going to love God back.
Desmond Tutu
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Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.
Desmond Tutu
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When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound - our own and others' - and it can finally heal.
Desmond Tutu
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There is no peace precisely because there has been no justice. As painful and inconvenient as justice may be, we have seen that the alternative allowing accountability to fall by the wayside is worse.
Desmond Tutu
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People almost always imagine that life is going to be better in town and that the streets of the town are paved with gold.
Desmond Tutu
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Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.
Desmond Tutu
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Dream of a world where children can laugh and play and not be blown up by a mine they thought was a toy.
Desmond Tutu
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The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it - oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.
Desmond Tutu
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We mustn't romanticize suffering. It can turn people bitter and hard, although it does seem to have been almost indispensable in making people into the kind of leaders that we admire.
Desmond Tutu
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Life is funny and we are really funny, especially when we get to be hoity toity we can be so ridiculous. Life is fun.
Desmond Tutu
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When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, Now is that political or social? He said, I feed you. Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.
Desmond Tutu