I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity.
Interpretation
Desmond Tutu advocates for the complete abolition of the death penalty, deeming it incompatible with human rights.
In this quote, Desmond Tutu expresses his strong opposition to the death penalty, arguing that it is an egregious violation of human rights. He highlights the hypocrisy of a nation that prides itself on its commitment to human rights while still sanctioning such an extreme form of punishment, calling it an obscenity and advocating for its complete end.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate on capital punishment to emphasize moral arguments against it.
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.
A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.
We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?
Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.
It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of; for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer.
I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.
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