Desmond Tutu Quotes

Many people ask me what I have learned from all of the experiences in my life, and I say unhesitatingly: People are wonderful. It is true. People really are wonderful.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Sometimes you wish you could keep quiet. It's the kind of thing you heard the prophet Jeremiah complain of where he says, "You know God, I didn't want to be a prophet and you made me speak words of condemnation against a people I love deeply. Your word is like a fire burning in my breast."

Ultimately, suffering is always political with all kinds of justifications - there are those who justify Israel's occupation of land as being a fulfillment of what God had promised.

Naming a center after a person who is still alive can make it seem that an individual somehow on their own was able to accomplish what he accomplished.

People took some part of us and used it to discriminate against us. In our case, it was our ethnicity; it's precisely the same thing for sexual orientation.

I have heard and seen many examples of the cruelty that we are able to visit on one another during my time. . . I have also seen incredible forgiveness and compassion. Yes, each of us has the capacity for great evil. But for every act of evil there are a dozen acts of goodness in our world that go unnoticed. It is only because we believe that people should be good that we despair when they are not. Indeed, if people condoned the evil, we would be justified in losing hope. But most of the world does not. We know that we are meant for better.

My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument."

Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.

Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity - or because of their sexual orientation.

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.

I am because other people are.

If we are to say that religion cannot be concerned with politics then we are really saying that there is a substantial part of human life in which God's writ does not run. If it is not God's, then whose is it? Who is in charge if not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Life is more than breath and a heartbeat; meaning and purpose are the life of life.

You think sometimes that maybe if the person who hurt you is clobbered you will feel a little better. But it actually doesn't.

To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo.

There are things that must evoke our anger to show we care. It is what we do with that anger. If we direct that energy we can use it positively or destructively.

That's the chief lesson I have learned: the texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail.

This is a moral universe, which means that, despite all the evidence that seems to be to the contrary, there is no way that evil and injustice and oppression and lies can have the last word.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.

Nothing is too much trouble for Love.

We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are going to be compassionate, be prepared for action.

We need other human beings in order to be human.

All people would really want peace and all would want to be sure that they would not be taken advantage of.

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.

A jealous person is doubly unhappy-over what he has, which is judged inferior, and over which he has not, which is judged superior. Such a person is doubly removed from knowing the true blessing of creation.

Forgiveness is not generally something that you find as a coin to be used by politicians.

In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

I think that because this is a moral universe, then right will prevail, goodness will prevail, compassion will prevail, laughter will prevail, love, caring, sharing will prevail. Because we are made for goodness. We are made for love.

If you are invisible, you are vulnerable. Birth Registration must be everyone's priority. Let's make all children visible and let's give every child a birthday!

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.

Without memory, there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future.

There are very few institutions that give prizes to people who may not have got to be number one, but are possibly better at coaxing the best out of others.

We need to be accountable to God's family. Once we start living in a way that is people-friendly to all of God's family, we will also be environment-friendly.

I am deeply moved by the warmth and courage of the Canadian people which I felt so strongly during my recent visit to your country. Your support of the struggle against apartheid restored me in my journey home and reassured me that many just people around the world are with us.

The world needs a revolution led by women.

People want much the same things, but they have been formed by history to have a particular perception of the other.

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.

Forgiving is a gift to the forgiver as well as to the perpetrator.

Retributive justice is one that says clobber him or clobber her because they clobbered me. So it emphasizes punishment.

I'm so, so thrilled that [Pope Francis] is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world.

I hope that when the time comes, I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life's journey in the manner of my choice.

Forgiveness is something that we are often asked to grant and very few of us ever have the roadmap of how to get from the pain that we have experienced to being able to forgive someone.

Instead of separation and division, all distinctions make for a rich diversity to be celebrated for the sake of the unity that underlies them. We are different so that we can know our need of one another.