Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the historical injustices of racism and discrimination, emphasizing the dehumanization that arises from such beliefs.
Desmond Tutu's quote reflects on the profound moral and ethical implications of racism, xenophobia, and unfair discrimination. By likening the plight of enslaved individuals to that of 'beasts of burden,' Tutu underscores the brutal reality that such ideologies can lead to the complete devaluation of human life, resulting in practices like slavery where individuals are treated as mere commodities rather than as people with dignity and rights. This serves as a powerful reminder of the necessity to resist and combat these harmful beliefs in order to uphold the sanctity and value of every human being.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation on the history of civil rights movements to highlight the importance of understanding the roots of discrimination.
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.
Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure.
Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's) you don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.
Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them, we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop.
Our present will become the past of other men and women. We depend on them to remember it with the complexity with which it was suffered. As others, once, depended on us.
All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.
Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
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