All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.
Interpretation
Desmond Tutu highlights the stark contrast between wealth and poverty in the United States, emphasizing societal division.
In this quote, Desmond Tutu draws attention to the significant economic disparity that exists within the United States, a nation often perceived as prosperous and affluent. He underscores the irony of a society that houses both extreme wealth and profound poverty, urging reflection on the implications of such a divide on social cohesion and justice. This statement serves as a critique of systemic inequalities and a call to acknowledge and address the struggles faced by the less fortunate in a nation celebrated for its riches.
In practice
This quote could be used during a discussion on economic inequality in a community meeting.
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.
Ideas are the greatest and most crucially practical power on earth.
Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.
No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?
Reality does not easily give up meaning; it's the biographer's job to clobber it into submission. You're meant not only to tame it but to extract substance, to identify cause and axiomatic effect. You subsist on the tactical omissions, the hollow words, the oddly unconnected dots.
Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
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