Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.
Interpretation
Religion can be a force for good or harm, depending on how it is used.
This quote by Desmond Tutu underscores the dual nature of religion, highlighting its potential as a source of nourishment and support, akin to a knife used for cutting bread. Alternatively, it warns of the destructive capability of religious belief when misused, illustrating how an instrument of faith can be weaponized against others, leading to conflict and suffering.
In practice
During a discussion on the role of religion in society.
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.
Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
Where we come from does not determine who we can become. What we look like places no limits on what we can achieve. We should all have the right to express ourselves, all have the right to be heard, all have the right to be what we can be: To reach for the sky and touch the stars. No matter who we are, no matter whether we are man or woman, or rich or poor: _x000D_ My voice, my right. My voice counts.
At the core of every religion is the belief that we care for everyone....It's not too late to help a neighbor in need and to do it with the swiftness, expertise, generosity and love that resides in the best of who we are.
I'm the blackest member of my family. You know, these mixed families produce children of all colors, and in Jamaica, the question of exactly what shade you were, in colonial Jamaica, that was the most important question. Because you could read off class and education and status from that. I was aware and conscious of that from the very beginning.
Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.
Monks, when ignorance is abandoned, and knowledge arises in the monk, with the ending of ignorance and the arising of knowledge he clings neither to sense-pleasures, nor does he cling to views, nor to precepts and vows, nor to a Self-doctrine. Not clinking, he is not disturbed; not disturbed, he attains individually nibbana.
In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.
I felt that chess... is a science in the form of a game... I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist.
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