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.
Interpretation
Desmond Tutu discusses the struggle against apartheid and its injustice to humanity.
This quote by Desmond Tutu highlights the deep injustices of apartheid in South Africa, emphasizing that it not only divided people by race but also denied them basic human rights. It calls attention to the moral obligation to fight against such discrimination and to recognize the shared humanity among all individuals, regardless of race.
In practice
This quote can be used during a speech about civil rights.
The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions
As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.
Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.
Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it. . . . Someone just ripped off my eyelids.
We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; without courage, the other virtues are useless.
The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.
To understand your fear is the beginning of really seeing.
I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall with our English dead.
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