Sunday, March 25, 2012

Sunday Salute - II

Continuing the series of salutes to people I admire and who I find worthy of emulation.  


Archbishop Desmond Tutu,  Nobel Peace Prize winner.




Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).
Tutu has been active in the defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed. He has campaigned to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986, the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987, the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999, the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2005 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Quotes:

“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.”
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”
“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
"I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute -- a white skin.”
"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." 
"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."
“Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.” 
“In the end what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love Him but how much He loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.” 

"Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. "
“Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.” 


Addendum
“[E]ven the supporters of apartheid were victims of the vicious system which they implemented and which they supported so enthusiastically,” he wrote in his book No Future Without Forgiveness. “In the process of dehumanizing another, in inflicting untold harm and suffering, inexorably the perpetrator was being dehumanized as well.”

2 comments:

Ur-spo said...

when he came to speak at my medical convention last year, there was a lot of upset/fuss to boycott him. I forget what the matter was; I think it had something to do with perceived anti-semiticism.

jaycoles@gmail.com said...

That is true, It is in the Wikipedia Account. He seems to have been sympathetic to Palestine while admitting Israel's right to exist.