Great Throughts Treasury

"A university must have a social conscience."

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."

"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."

"Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility."

"Nothing is too much trouble for love."

"One of the ways of helping to destroy a people is to tell them they don’t have a history, that they have no roots."

"A jealous person is doubly unhappy - over what he has, which is judged inferior, and over what he has not, which is judged superior. Such a person is doubly removed from knowing the true blessings of creation."

"A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons."

"We witness... by being a community of reconciliation, a forgiving community of the forgiven."

"We don’t want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can’t improve something that is intrinsically evil."

"A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."

"Are you able to restore to those people the time when their freedom was denied them? If you have evidence for goodness sake produce it in a court of law. People with power have an incredible capacity for wanting to be able to retain that power and don't like scrutiny."

"And every human being is precious."

"A person is a person through other persons; you can't be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships."

"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."

"At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I have said: 'Move your hands,' and I've said 'Look at your hands - different colors representing different people. You are the Rainbow People of God.'"

"Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart."

"As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities."

"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."

"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."

"Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that the suffering in our lives and in the world will ever end. I want to share with you my faith and my understanding that this suffering can be transformed and redeemed. There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine. God created order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, and God can do so always, can do so now--in our personal lives and in our lives as nations, globally. ... Indeed, God is transforming the world now--through us--because God loves us."

"But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next."

"Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional."

"Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another."

"Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice."

"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

"Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that."

"Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant."

"Forgiveness is an absolute necessity for continued human existence."

"Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning."

"Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened."

"For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too."

"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."

"Fundamental rights belong to the human being just because you are a human being."

"God is patient with us to become the God's children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping."

"God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven."

"God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God."

"God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion."

"God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion."

"Good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through him who loves us."

"He has a childlike, boyish, impish, mischievousness. And I have to try and make him behave properly, like a holy man!"

"History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene."

"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness."

"I am 52 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."

"How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?"

"Hate has no place in the house of God."

"I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum."

"I am deeply moved by the warmth and courage of the Canadian people which I felt so strongly during my recent visit to your country. Your support of the struggle against apartheid restored me in my journey home and reassured me that many just people around the world are with us."

"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."