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
Past
Trust
Reckon
Certain
Levels
Caricatures
Able
Happen
Dismiss
Trying
Courses
Legacy
People
Course
Burden
Often
Easily
Speak
Carry
Happens
Level
Albatross

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death. Victory is ours through Him who loved us.
Desmond Tutu
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We so desperately long for all of us to learn that we are meant for one another. We are meant for complementarity. The Syrians are members of our family.
Desmond Tutu
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Too many people think that reconciliation means you soft-pedal differences.
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The devastation wreaked by landmines is not only horrendous but immoral
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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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In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.
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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No future without forgiveness.
Desmond Tutu
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If I diminish you, I diminish myself
Desmond Tutu
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In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.
Desmond Tutu
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God loved me before I actually was.
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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Race should not be used to claim privileges and rights for one group, exclusively, which are denied other different groups. Then that is an illegitimate use of race.
Desmond Tutu
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There are things that must evoke our anger to show we care. It is what we do with that anger. If we direct that energy we can use it positively or destructively.
Desmond Tutu
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The sad problem is that we see ourselves as being quite terribly small. Instead of spending my time being envious, I need to celebrate your and my different gifts, even if mine are perhaps less spectacular than yours.
Desmond Tutu
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Suffering is part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter or ennoble us. It can ennoble us and become a spirituality of transformation when we find meaning in it.
Desmond Tutu
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Do your little bit of good where you are.
Desmond Tutu
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God looks at the Middle East, looks at Palestine. When you go to the Holy Land and see what's being done to the Palestinians at checkpoints, for us, it's the kind of thing we experienced in South Africa.
Desmond Tutu
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Most of the leading figures of the Old Testament were polygamists. Abraham had several wives and concubines. If they wanted, they could say this was approved in the Bible.
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