Desmond Tutu Quotes About Reconciliation

Quotes about: Reconciliation

• Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.

  Desmond Tutu

  Hurt, Real, Healing

• Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.

  Desmond Tutu

  Revenge, Military, Men

• True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know.

  Desmond Tutu

  Forgiving, Done, Repentance

• Forgiveness and reconciliation are not just ethereal, spiritual, other-worldly activities. They have to do with the real world. They are realpolitik, because in a very real sense, without forgiveness, there is no future.

  Desmond Tutu

  Forgiveness, Spiritual, Real

  "The Truth About Forgiveness" by Wendy Strgar, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 27, 2010.

• We must not only speak about forgiveness and reconciliation, we must act on these principles.

  Desmond Tutu

  Principles, Speak, Reconciliation

  Desmond Tutu, John Webster (1982). “Bishop Desmond Tutu, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: a collection of his recent statements in the struggle for justice in South Africa”

• There is no peace in Southern Africa. There is no peace because there is no justice. There can be no real peace and security until there be first justice enjoyed by all the inhabitants of that beautiful land. The Bible knows nothing about peace without justice, for that would be crying "peace, peace, where there is no peace". God's Shalom, peace, involves inevitably righteousness, justice, wholeness, fullness of life, participation in decision-making, goodness, laughter, joy, compassion, sharing and reconciliation.

  Desmond Tutu

  Beautiful, Laughter, Real

  Desmond Tutu's Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1984.

• Too many people think that reconciliation means you soft-pedal differences.

  Desmond Tutu

  Mean, Thinking, Differences

• Reconciliation is a long process. We don't have the kind of race clashes that we thought would happen. What we have is xenophobia, and it's very distressing. But maybe you ought to be lenient with us. We've been free for just 12 years.

  Desmond Tutu

  Xenophobia, Race, Years

  Interview with Sonja Steptoe, content.time.com. October 17, 2006.

• When you think of the KKK, they actually have as their emblem a fiery cross. And they don't see any contradiction between the cross, an instrument of suffering that procured our reconciliation with God, and its use as a symbol for nefarious attacks on black people. But they believe that they are being obedient to God because they can read things that they see.

  Desmond Tutu

  Believe, Thinking, Kkk

  Interview with Amina Chaudary, www.theislamicmonthly.com. June 17, 2012.

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