Believe: The Words and Inspiration of Archbishop Desmond Tutu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry.

It gives a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly.

 

 

 

If we have loved well while we were alive,

there is life after death here—our live will go on for generations.

 

 

 

I'm coming to believe more and more in the truth that everything we do has consequences.

A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear.

 

 

 

To forgive is not just to be altruistic.

 

 

 

A person is a person through other persons.

 

 

 

We can be human only together.

 

 

 

Children are a wonderful gift.

They are young and small persons with minds and ideas,

hating to be talked down to.

They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things

and to expose tham and humbug for what they are.

 

 

 

My father always used to say,

"Don't raise your voice.

Improve your argument."

Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters,

nor can we say that a large,

unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.

 

 

 

I love to be loved.

 

 

 

Equality is essential to human life and well-being.

 

 

 

Differences are not indended to separate, to alienate.

We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.

 

 

Those who forget the past, as many have pointed out,

are doomed to repeat it.

 

 

 

Nothing is too much trouble for love.

 

 

 

Many people ask me what I have learned form all of the experiences in my life,

and I say unhesitatingly: People are wonderful.

It is true. People really are wonderful.

 

 

 

Peace without justice is an impossibility.

 

 

 

To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already.

It is to support to status quo.

 

 

 

Peace invloves inevitable righteousness,

justice, wholesomeness, fullness of life,

participation in decision making,

goodness, laughter, joy, compassion,

sharing, and reconciliation.

 

 

We humans can tolerate suffering

but we cannot tolerate meaninglessness.

 

 

At times of despair,

we must learn to see with new eyes.

 

 

Forgiveness gives us the capacity to make a new start...

And forgiveness is the grace by which your enable the other person to get up,

and get up with dignity, to begin anew...

In the act of forgiveness we ane declaring our faith in the future of a relationship

and the capacity of the wrongdoer to change.

 

 

For true reconciliation is a deeply personal matter.

It can happen only between persons

who assert their own personhood

and

who acknowledge and respect that of others.

 

 

We should be generous in our judgments of others,

for we can never really know all there is to know about another.

 

 

 

We have tended to treat the weak, the poor, the unemployed, the failures with disdain

because success and power have beocme the gods

at whose altars we have burned incense and bowed the knee.

We have tended to be imbarrassed by compassion and caring

as things that were inappropriate in the harsh, callous world of business.

 

 

 

Arrogance really comes from insecurity,

and in the end our feeling that we are bigger than others

is really the flip side of our feeling that we are smaller than others.

 

 

 

Instead of separation and division,

all distinctions make for a rich diversity to be celebrated

for the sake of the unity that underlies them.

We are different so that we can know our need of one another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am What I Am

Because Of

Who We All Are

 

 

 

       We

Me

 

 

 

 

Product Description

A collection of words and inspiration by four of the 20th Century's most preeminent humanitarians.

About the Author

The BLUE MOUNTAIN ARTS COLLECTION writing team in Boulder, Colorado is dedicated to the mission statement of Blue Mountain Arts® founders and visionaries Steven Schutz and Susan Polis Schutz: Help people communicate their feelings.

 

 

 

 

 

Wisdom is quiet, yet hopeful. It is seasoned, but ever new, analytical, loving, dignified and determined to believe the best for all of us. These are the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Believe features so many wonderful excerpts from speeches and sermons meant to teach and inspire all within the sound of his voice. This little book packs a powerful punch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desmond Mpilo Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and was only the second black person ever to receive it. In 1986 he was elected archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the Anglican Church in South Africa. In 1994, after the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela, Tutu was appointed as chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate apartheid-era crimes. His policy of forgiveness and reconciliation has become an international example of conflict resolution, and a trusted method of postconflict reconstruction. He is currently the chair of The Elders, where he gives vocal defense of human rights and campaigns for the oppressed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Believe-Words-Inspiration-Archbishop-Desmond/dp/1598422413/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_6