Desmond Tutu Quotes

91 Sourced Quotes

The sad problem is that we see ourselves as being quite terribly small. Instead of spending my time being envious, I need to celebrate your and my different gifts, even if mine are perhaps less spectacular than yours.

Desmond Tutu
The only separation the Bible knows is between believers on the one hand and unbelievers on the other. Any other kind of separation, division, disunity is of the devil. It is evil and from sin.

Desmond Tutu
If we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do belong together, that our destinies are bound up in one another's, that we can be free only together, that we can be human only together, then a glorious world would come into being where all of us lived harmoniously together as members of one family, the human family.

Desmond Tutu
All of us experience fear, but when we confront and acknowledge it, we are able to turn it into courage. Being courageous does not mean never being scared; it means acting as you know you must even though you are undeniably afraid.

Desmond Tutu
There is no peace in Southern Africa. There is no peace because there is no justice.

Desmond Tutu
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... that is what has upheld the morale of our people, to know that in the end good will prevail.

Desmond Tutu
To treat anyone as if they were less than human, less than a brother or a sister, no matter what they have done, is to contravene the very laws of our humanity.

Desmond Tutu
Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon. We had to distinguish between the deed and the perpetrator, between the sinner and the sin, to hate and condemn the sin while being filled with compassion for the sinner.

Desmond Tutu
Arrogance really comes from insecurity, and in the end our feeling that we are bigger than others is really the flip side of our feeling that we are smaller than others.

Desmond Tutu
Children learn about the nature of the world from their family. They learn about power and about justice, about peace and about compassion within the family. Whether we oppress or liberate our children in our relationships with them will determine whether they grow up to oppress and be oppressed or to liberate and be liberated.

Desmond Tutu
Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God's grace and God's love for us... Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others.

Desmond Tutu
Forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up and get up with dignity, to begin anew.

Desmond Tutu
When two persons are engaged in conflict and one of them is considerably stronger than the other, to be neutral is not just and fair and impartisan, because to be neutral is in fact to side with the powerful.

Desmond Tutu
If we have loved well while we were alive, there is life after death here-our love will go on for generations.

Desmond Tutu
To forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, the greatest good.

Desmond Tutu
I'm coming to believe more and more in the truth that everything we do has consequences. A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear.

Desmond Tutu
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.

Desmond Tutu
Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Desmond Tutu
God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

Desmond Tutu
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.

Desmond Tutu
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.

Desmond Tutu
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.

Desmond Tutu
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.

Desmond Tutu
"Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems – poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict – that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation?" [The Communion, which] "used to be known for embodying the attribute of comprehensiveness, of inclusiveness, where we were meant to accommodate all and diverse views, saying we may differ in our theology but we belong together as sisters and brothers" now seems "hell-bent on excommunicating one another. God must look on and God must weep."

Desmond Tutu
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.

Desmond Tutu
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.

Desmond Tutu
When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

Desmond Tutu
We refuse to be treated as the doormat for the government to wipe its jackboots on.

Desmond Tutu
What an awful blot on our copy book. Do we really care about human rights, do we care that people of flesh and blood, fellow Africans, are being treated like rubbish, almost worse than they were ever treated by rabid racists?

Desmond Tutu
Having looked the beast of the past in the eye, having asked and received forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past—not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.

Desmond Tutu