"Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human... You share what you have. It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.' We belong in a bundle of life. We say, 'A person is a person through other persons'. It is not, 'I think therefore I am'. It says rather: 'I am human because I belong. I participate. I share'. 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 turtured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are."

Desmond Tutu, from his book No Future without Forgiveness

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