One of the most useful tasks of apology is to bring home to us how keenly, honestly, and painfully past generations pursued aims that now seem to us wrong and disgraceful. It behooves us to consider if future geenrations will similarly regard the aims we most defend today.

No apology is equal to the task set before it.

Accepting the apology signals the acknowledgment of a need to move forward, but not necessarily together.

When we apologize we end our struggle with history.

We rarely wrestle with apology and lose.

Apology calls for a willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the wronged party and the inherent value of the relationship, not for what it brings to you but for what you can bring to it.

Apology is both transactional, in that it restores what has been broken to what it was before, and transformational, in that it creates opportunities that didn't exist before.