Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Owning
Bound
Bounds
Forgiving
Perpetrator
Victim
Culprit
Mercy
Perpetrators
Always
Shackles
Would
Depended

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

Image
You ask when is it that you can say yes we have had enough. It is enough revenge and I think now we have restored the equilibrium. It never happens!
Desmond Tutu
Image
Our Lord wanted us to be Christ-like. Christ-like doesn't mean not having faults. It means that you do actually have a capacity to draw out the good that is in others.
Desmond Tutu
Image
If you are invisible, you are vulnerable. Birth Registration must be everyone's priority. Let's make all children visible and let's give every child a birthday!
Desmond Tutu
Image
The things [Pope Francis] has done in a short period of time: the fact that he does not live in a huge papal mansion and just dropped by in the dining room where ordinary people have meals. You think of his background, where he didn't use limousines in South America, that he used public transport.
Desmond Tutu
Image
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.
Desmond Tutu
Image
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
Desmond Tutu
Image
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.
Desmond Tutu
Image
I believe in MasterPeace. World leaders cannot push back armed conflict alone. We need the whole world to make this happen.
Desmond Tutu
Image
I can't control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.
Desmond Tutu
Image
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.
Desmond Tutu
Image
God has been incredible in creating us to be persons.
Desmond Tutu
Image
When we look at a conflict, it is so often rooted in injustice, prejudice, competition for resources, poverty, poor governance and corruption.
Desmond Tutu
Image
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
Image
If we are going to bring about change, then men, for goodness sake, stand up and stand for the right. And I say, ‘power to the women.
Desmond Tutu
Image
All people would really want peace and all would want to be sure that they would not be taken advantage of.
Desmond Tutu
Image
God says, Please, please help me realize this dream. And some of God's best collaborators are the young, because you dream. You dream God's dream.
Desmond Tutu
Image
It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future
Desmond Tutu
Image
Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past—not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.
Desmond Tutu
Image
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
Image
Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon. We had to distinguish between the deed and the perpetrator, between the sinner and the sin, to hate and condemn the sin while being filled with compassion for the sinner.
Desmond Tutu