To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.
Interpretation
Taking a life in response to another life lost is an act of revenge, not true justice.
Desmond Tutu's quote highlights the distinction between revenge and justice, asserting that responding to violence with more violence does not achieve true accountability or fairness. Instead, it perpetuates a cycle of harm and fails to address the deeper issues that lead to such tragedies.
In practice
In a discussion on moral dilemmas in a philosophy class.
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.
Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely different kind of force, one which commands and coerces them and the origin of which is obscure and inexplicable despite the reality of its presence.
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way.
If we have no mercy toward others, that is one proof that we have never experienced God's mercy.
There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.
How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant.
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