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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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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Human
Violate
Humans
Dictator
Even
Claim
Things
Claims
Would
Single
Respect
Worst
Rights
Egregious

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To remain neutral in situations of injustice is to be complicit in that injustice.
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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.
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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.
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People took some part of us and used it to discriminate against us. In our case, it was our ethnicity it's precisely the same thing for sexual orientation.
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In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.
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Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion.
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God loved me before I actually was.
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There are very good Christians who are compassionate and caring. And there are very bad Christians. You can say that about Islam, about Hinduism, about any faith. That is why I was saying that it was not the faith per se but the adherent. People will use their religion to justify virtually anything.
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Every praying person, every person who has an encounter with God, must have a passionate concern for his or her brother and sister, his or her neighbor. To treat any of these as if he were less than the child of God is to deny the validity of one's spiritual existence.
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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.
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Men and boys, we show our manhood through the way we treat our women. Our wives, our sisters, our mothers.
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I can't control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.
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We can only be human together.
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It was Christians, you know, not Pagans, who were responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not Pagans, who lynched people here in the South, who burned people at the stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ.
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A person who is assured of the love of God will see his fellow men in a different light and treat them and himself differently, and of course this also applies to business leaders.
Desmond Tutu
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Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.
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I've often been a little concerned by people who say they are color-blind, people who claim, in some ways, not to be aware of race, and I hope that those who will be looking for a vision of the future will be a little more honest, and say race actually does matter.
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Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.
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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
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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