We mustn't romanticize suffering. It can turn people bitter and hard, although it does seem to have been almost indispensable in making people into the kind of leaders that we admire.

To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.

That so called "original sin" does not know any racial discrimination.

When you nurse a grudge it is not good for your health.

You don't think we have a copyright to forgiveness, it is done by people everywhere.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are not just ethereal, spiritual, other-worldly activities. They have to do with the real world. They are realpolitik, because in a very real sense, without forgiveness, there is no future.