Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.
Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don’t have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.
We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.
My father always used to say, “Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument.” Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.
Though wrong gratifies in the moment, good yields its gifts over a lifetime.
My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma
We learn from history that we don’t learn from history!
If you are neutral in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.
It is a remarkable feat to be able to see past the inhumanity of the behavior and recognize the humanity of the person committing the atrocious acts. This is not weakness. This is heroic strength, the noblest strength of the human spirit.
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 are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.
When you set out to change the world, the job seems insurmountable, but each of us can do his or her small part to effect change. We change the world when we choose to create a world of forgiveness in our own hearts and minds.
This is what healing demands. Behavior that is hurtful, shameful, abusive, or demeaning must be brought into the fierce light of truth, and truth can be brutal.
If you are able to talk about your life and the joys and sorrows you have experienced, if you know your story, you are much more likely to be a skillful parent.
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.
The way to understand any enemy is to realize that, from his perspective, he is not a villain but a hero.
Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.
Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.
Do your little bit of good where you are it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.
I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
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.
The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.
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.
God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.
Do your little bit of good where you are it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
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.
Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?
Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.
In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.
But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.
For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.
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.
Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.
Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.
Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.
If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
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.
Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.