Quotes About Forgiveness

There will be no future unless there is peace. There can be no peace unless there is reconciliation. But there can be no reconciliation before there is forgiveness. And there can be no forgiveness unless people repent.

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.

Forgiveness does not mean that we pretend things are anything other than they are. I am hurt, we say. I am betrayed, we announce. I am in pain and grief. I have been treated unfairly. I am feeling ashamed. I am angry this has been done to me. I am sad and I am lost. I may never forget what you have done to me, but I will forgive. I will do everything in my power not to let you harm me again. I will not retaliate against you or against myself.

But just as we do not forgive for others, we also do not forgive for God.

We need rituals for all traumas and loss, whether it is betrayal or infidelity or violence or murder. Ritual helps us heal, and ritual helped me heal and become ready to consider the person who murdered Angela, his story, his pain.

Peace always comes to those who choose to forgive

Meet me here Speak my name I am not your enemy I am your teacher I may even be your friend Let us tell our truth together, you and I My name is anger: I say you have been wronged My name is shame: my story is your hidden pain My name is fear: my story is vulnerability My name is resentment: I say things should have been different My name is grief My name is depression My name is heartache My name is anxiety I have many names And many lessons I am not your enemy I am your teacher

Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitiveness, are corrosive of this good. To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. It gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them. When uhuru, or freedom and independence

I would love to know who killed my father. So would my brother." Her next words stunned me and left me breathless. "We want to forgive them. We want to forgive, but we don't know who to forgive.

forgiveness is not a choice you make for someone else; it is a choice you make for yourself.

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

Forgiveness is the way we return what has been taken from us and restore the love and kindness and trust that has been lost. With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world.

The miracle was the result of the negotiated settlement. There would have been no negotiated settlement and so no new democratic South Africa had the negotiators on one side insisted that all perpetrators be brought to trial. While the Allies could pack up and go home after Nuremberg, we in South Africa had to live with one another.

Each of us has the capacity to commit the wrongs against others that were committed against us. Although I might say, "I would never . . ." genuine humility will answer, "Never say never." Rather say, "I hope that, given the same set of circumstances, I would not . . ." But can we ever really know?

We do not need to succumb to the temptation to meet such a violation with retaliation. The only way to heal this hurt is to give voice to what ails us. It is only in this way that we can keep our pain and loss from taking root inside us. It is only in this way that we have a chance for freedom.

Forgiveness among the members of older generations could open the door to healthy and supportive relationships among younger generations.

When we stay stuck in the unhappy story of what we have done we deny ourselves the gift of transformation. Learning from our past is not the same as being held hostage by the things we have done. At some stage we must let go of the past and begin again.

A victim is in a position of weakness and subject to the whims of others. Heroes are people who determine their own fate and their own future. A victim had nothing to give and no choice to make. A hero has the strength and ability to be generous and forgiving and the power and freedom that come from being able to make the choice of forgiveness.

Ultimately, forgiveness is a choice we make, and the ability to forgive others comes from the recognition that we are all flawed and all human. We all have made mistakes and harmed others. We will again. We find it easier to practice forgiveness when we can recognize that the roles could have been reversed.

we choose to either walk the path of revenge and be bound to suffering, or take the path of forgiveness and be freed into healing.

When we accept our own pain we can begin to see past it to the other person's woundedness. We can begin to consider that if we were in their shoes, if we stood inside their story, we might have done to others what they did to us.

When we can accept both our humanity and the perpetrator's we can write a new story. One in which we are no longer cast as a victim, but a survivor, even perhaps a hero.

The process we embarked on through the TRC was, as all real growth proves to be, astoundingly painful and profoundly beautiful.

Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.