Quote

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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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Self
Depend
Things
Outside
Depends
State
Whatever
Downturns
Enjoy
Booms
Doesn
Downturn
States
Assurance

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.
Desmond Tutu
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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.
Desmond Tutu
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I regard Abraham as my ancestor. Some of the greatest inspiration I have got has come from what we call the Old Testament prophets and what Jews would say our prophets.
Desmond Tutu
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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.
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 have a planet that is at risk, where resources don't have a permanent life. We are going to have to make the decision: are we going to survive or are we waiting for our extinction? One day we will wake up and find people are fighting not for oil but water.
Desmond Tutu
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There is no situation that is not transformable. There is no person who is hopeless. There is no set of circumstances that cannot be turned about by ordinary human beings and their natural capacity for love of the deepest sort.
Desmond Tutu
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But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.
Desmond Tutu
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If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
Desmond Tutu
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The leaders that the world admires seem almost all to be people who haven't had things quite so smooth or easy in their lives.
Desmond Tutu
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There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.
Desmond Tutu
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Catharsis is about cleansing and healing at one and the same time - healing memories and attitudes, healing the spirit and the heart.
Desmond Tutu
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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.
Desmond Tutu
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I have no doubt that in the future, the laws that criminalize human love and commitment will look the way the apartheid laws do to us now, so obviously wrong
Desmond Tutu
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I believe history teaches us a categorical lesson: that once a people are determined to become free, then nothing in the world can stop them reaching their goal.
Desmond Tutu
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Reconciliation is a long process. We don't have the kind of race clashes that we thought would happen. What we have is xenophobia, and it's very distressing. But maybe you ought to be lenient with us. We've been free for just 12 years.
Desmond Tutu
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Human beings can be awful, but they can also be tremendous.
Desmond Tutu
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Many people ask me what I have learned from all of the experiences in my life, and I say unhesitatingly: People are wonderful. It is true. People really are wonderful.
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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I'm absolutely, utterly, and completely certain that God wouldn't be homophobic. I'd much rather go to hell - I really would much rather go to hell - than go to a homophobic heaven.
Desmond Tutu