Desmond Tutu Quotes

A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives.

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.

We must act now and wake up to our moral obligations. The poor and vulnerable are members of God's family and are the most severely affected by droughts, high temperatures, the flooding of coastal cities, and more severe and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change. We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources.

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.

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.

If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.

I wonder whether they have rum and Coke in Heaven? Maybe it's too mundane a pleasure, but I hope so -- as a sundowner. Except, of course, the sun never goes down there. Oh, man, this heaven is going to take some getting used to.

You are not an afterthought, you are not an accident.

When I care about black liberation, it is because I care about white liberation.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

Forgiveness is an absolute necessity for continued human existence.

The leaders that the world admires seem almost all to be people who haven't had things quite so smooth or easy in their lives.

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.

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.

Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. And never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant.

Reconciliation is a long process. We don't have the kind of race clashes that we thought would happen. What we have is xenophobia, and it's very distressing. But maybe you ought to be lenient with us. We've been free for just 12 years.

Forgiving is not easy. It is not cheap.

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

Consider what we sometimes do with our children: We imbue them with this sense, very early on, that they have got to succeed. We are not content that they just do well, they have got to wipe the floor with the opposition.

There is no justice in killing in the name of justice.

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

One day we'll wake up and discover we are family.

A person is a person through other persons; you can't be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.

Life is funny and we are really funny, especially when we get to be hoity toity; we can be so ridiculous. Life is fun.

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.

Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.

Most of us have made the mistake that after they crossed the Red Sea they spent 40 years in the wilderness fighting amongst each other.

Easter says to us that despite everything to the contrary, his will for us will prevail, love will prevail over hate, justice over injustice and oppression, peace over exploitation and bitterness.

There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.

We shall be free only together, black and white. We shall survive only together, black and white. We can be human only together, black and white.

The reprisal against the suicide bomber does not bring peace. There is a suicide bomber, a reprisal and then a counter-reprisal. And it just goes on and on.

God is patient with us to become the God's children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping.

One of the ways of helping to destroy a people is to tell them they don't have a history that they have no roots.

There is no religion in fact that I know that encourages or propagates violence in that its adherents should carry out.

You will find that the Bible, if you want it to, will justify many things. St. Paul had a very male chauvinistic view of women. He would say things like women must not talk in church, must cover their heads, they mustn't talk and must remember that it was a woman who first tempted and this whole mess started because women messed us up. So you can read it in such a way that it justifies polygamy.

South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world.

If we are going to bring about change, then men, for goodness sake, stand up and stand for the right. And I say, ‘power to the women.

We worshipped in the temple of cutthroat competition, and so some cooked the books, because the treasure is so great.

True forgiveness deals with the past, all of the past, to make the future possible. We cannot go on nursing grudges even vicariously for those who cannot speak for themselves any longer. We have to accept that we do what we do for generations past, present and yet to come. That is what makes a community a community or a people a people-for better or for worse.

We can be human only together. A person is a person to other persons.

Some people are able to use Bible as a means of opposing injustice, whereas others are able to find justification.

Every single one of us can do something, however small, to make a difference.

I have voted for the ANC, but I would very sadly not be able to vote for them after the way things have gone.

Mother Teresa, you could say many things about her, but certainly you would not say she was macho. Anything but.

As a teacher in order not to have to answer too many questions, you stretch your answers.

I am not an afterthought I am not an accident.

When people see what is happening in Gaza, that can't make you too fond of the perpetrators - the Israelis. If you are a Muslim and you look at what is happening there, it fills you with a lot of resentment. Especially if you are weak, then you are nursing these grudges and you are increasing in bitterness and look for a chance to get your own back.