Desmond Tutu
Anglican priest, human rights defender, non-fiction writer, Protestant theologian, archbishop, political activist, anti-apartheid activist
Read on Wikipedia1931 – 2021
All Quotes by Desmond Tutu
“God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.”
“Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.”
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
“Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.”
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
“God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.”
“Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.”
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”
“In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.”
“Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.”
“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.”
“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”
“Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.”
“Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?”
“It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.”
“We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.”
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
“God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.”
“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.”
“Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.”
“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”
“Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.”
“Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.”
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
“But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.”
“I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't.”
“God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.”
“The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.”
“God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.”
“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”
“Without forgiveness, there's no future.”
“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”
“What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?”
“Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”
“In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.”
“How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?”
“In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.”
“In the Bible, we first encounter God when he sides with a bunch of slaves against a powerful Pharaoh, an act of grace freely given.”
“Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.”
“Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.”
“We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.”
“Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”
“You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.”
“The universe can take quite a while to deliver.”
“Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.”
“For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.”
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.”
“If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”
“Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.”
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
“Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?”
“Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.”
“We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.”
“I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.”
“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”
“A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.”
“As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.”
“Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.”
“When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.”
“God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.”
“And every human being is precious.”
“It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.”
“In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.”
“Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.”
“People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.”
“In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.”
“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.”
“Oh, 1994, April 27. There won't be a day like that ever again. I mean, the sky was blue, with a blueness that had never been there before.”
“I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.”
“When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it's again not people who are intrinsically evil.”
“I mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.”
“All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.”
“Hate has no place in the house of God.”
“I've never doubted that apartheid - because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil - was going to bite the dust eventually.”
“Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I'm quite shy.”
“It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.”
“When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.”
“Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.”
“In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.”
“I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.”
“I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.”
“In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute - a white skin.”
“I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.”
“Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.”
“The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it - oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.”
“For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.”
“We would like to see you departing peacefully.”
“You must show the world that you abhor fighting.”
“God is patient with us to become the God's children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping.”
“Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.”
“In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.”
“When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.”
“Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?”
“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.”
“Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.”
“It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.”
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
“But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.”
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
“I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute — a white skin.”
“Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.”
“Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”
“I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.”
“History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene.”
“Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant.”
“Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.”
“For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.”
“When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.”
“When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.”
“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”
“Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.”
“A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.”
“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.”
“We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil.”
“We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death.”
“At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I have said: 'Move your hands,' and I've said 'Look at your hands - different colors representing different people. You are the Rainbow People of God.'”
“It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.”
“There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.”
“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”
“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”
“Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion.”
“Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.”
“South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world.”
“Forgiveness is an absolute necessity for continued human existence.”
“God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven.”
“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”
“We refuse to be treated as the doormat for the government to wipe its jackboots on.”
“I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: "You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a pity he's not a Christian"? I don't think that is the case — because, you see, God is not a Christian.”
“He has a childlike, boyish, impish, mischievousness. And I have to try and make him behave properly, like a holy man!”
“We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side.”
“I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.”
“What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong.”
“Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can't ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people.”
“Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.”
“We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.”
“Sometimes you want to whisper in God's ear, "God, we know you are in charge, but why don't you make it slightly more obvious?"”
“The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.”
“You and I are created for transcendence, laughter, caring. God deliberately did not make the world perfect, for God is looking for you and me to be fellow workers with God.”
“It is for real that injustice and oppression will not have the last word. There was a time when Hitler looked like he was going to vanquish all of Europe, and where is he now?”
“Without forgiveness, there's no future.”