To forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, the greatest good.

I suppose being the kind of creatures we [people] are, we like to censor the past, and are selective, or want to be selective about the things that we remember. If you want to destroy people, destroy their memory, destroy their history.

Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

True forgiveness deals with the past, all of the past, to make the future possible. We cannot go on nursing grudges even vicariously for those who cannot speak for themselves any longer. We have to accept that we do what we do for generations past, present and yet to come. That is what makes a community a community or a people a people-for better or for worse.

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

We need other human beings in order to be human.