Quote

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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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Speak
Carry
Happens
Level
Albatross
Past
Trust
Reckon
Certain
Levels
Caricatures
Able
Happen
Dismiss
Trying
Courses
Legacy
People
Course
Burden
Often
Easily

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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Consider what we sometimes do with our children: We imbue them with this sense, very early on, that they have got to succeed. We are not content that they just do well, they have got to wipe the floor with the opposition.
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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The world's forests are a shared stolen treasure that we must put back for our children's future
Desmond Tutu
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In most, when you go to church, most churches when they have images of the good shepherd, they show Jesus carrying a nice fluffy lamb. Now fluffy little lambs don't stray from their mommy's. The sheep that will stray is the most obstreperous, troublesome one.
Desmond Tutu
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Anything war can do, peace can do better.
Desmond Tutu
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As human beings, even if we were to have tried to forget the past, if you dealt with it in a cavalier fashion, it would return to haunt you.
Desmond Tutu
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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.
Desmond Tutu
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It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future
Desmond Tutu
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We have an extraordinary God. God is a mighty God, but this God needs you. When someone is hungry, bread doesn't come down from heaven. When God wants to feed the hungry, you and I must feed the hungry. And now God wants peace in the world.
Desmond Tutu
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God is trying to woo us into a love affair with God.
Desmond Tutu
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Catharsis returns us to the purpose for which were originally intended - to be called by God to do good - and thus ultimately returns us to ourselves.
Desmond Tutu
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A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives.
Desmond Tutu
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When we look at a conflict, it is so often rooted in injustice, prejudice, competition for resources, poverty, poor governance and corruption.
Desmond Tutu
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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
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The reprisal against the suicide bomber does not bring peace. There is a suicide bomber, a reprisal and then a counter-reprisal. And it just goes on and on.
Desmond Tutu
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We are living in an historic moment. We are each called to take part in a great transformation. Our survival as a species is threatened by global warming, economic meltdown, and an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. Yet these threats offer an opportunity to awaken as an interconnected and beloved community.
Desmond Tutu
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I hope that you will be amongst those young people who say we worked to change the world. We worked to make the world a more gentle, a more compassionate, a more caring world.
Desmond Tutu
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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.
Desmond Tutu
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What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?
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