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Quote by Desmond Tutu

“Most poor people I know are proud and really want not a handout but a hand up. They do have an inherent pride and dignity, and we should treat them as those who have fallen on bad days.”

Quote by Desmond Tutu

Author

Desmond Tutu, born on October 7, 1931, was a prominent anti-apartheid activist, theologian, and author from South Africa. He played a significant role in the abolition of apartheid in South Africa and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his efforts. more

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“Life is funny and we are really funny, especially when we get to be hoity toity; we can be so ridiculous. Life is fun.”

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“Dream of a world where poverty is history, dream of a world where we don't spend those obscene billions on arms, knowing full well that a tiny fraction of those budgets of death would ensure that children everywhere had clean water to drink, could afford the cheap inoculations against preventable diseases, would have good schools, adequate healthcare and decent homes.”

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“Dream of a world where children can laugh and play and not be blown up by a mine they thought was a toy.”

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“The pressure to succeed has a lot to do with why people overstep the line. It is a peculiar weakness of western culture where we have made a fetish of success.”

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“We give kudos to people who have succeeded. We don't care in what they succeeded as long as they succeeded. The worst thing that can happen to anybody in this cultural environment is to fail.”

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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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“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.”

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“Our Christian faith is actually very subversive of the conventional notion of success - the notion that what invests a person with worth is something extrinsic.”

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“The acknowledgement that this person is English, white, or French, or German, this is Portuguese, this is Rwandan, this is Senegalese, this is a black South Africans is a glorious thing. To speak of those positively, to say that they have characteristics, each one of them, that the others almost always do not have, and that there is a complementarily about it.”

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“We must return to the fundamentals; the fundamentals being that you count. That is where you start from. That you count; you matter for God. That is a fantastic realization, and one that very few of us actually get to accept.”

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