Quotes by Desmond Tutu (Page 2 of 2)

People are killed because they're gay. I don't think, What do I want to do today? I want to speak up on gay rights. No. It's God catching me by my neck. I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can't!

Each of us has a God-shaped space within us. Only God can fill that space. But we run ourselves ragged trying to find things other than God to fill it with.

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.

I pray that politicians, lawmakers and religious leaders have the courage to support the choices terminally ill citizens make in departing Mother Earth with dignity and love.

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

As a Christian, I believe in the sanctity of life and that death is a part of life.

I think we need to grow in our self-assurance that is not scared of being challenged, that the truth we uphold can stand up to the closest possible scrutiny.

The future of our fragile, beautiful planet home is in our hands. As God's family, we are stewards of God's creation. We can be wantonly irresponsible, or we can be caring and compassionate. God says, I have set before you life and death... Choose life.

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.

Human beings have a vested interest in being trustworthy.

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?

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.

I believe in MasterPeace. World leaders cannot push back armed conflict alone. We need the whole world to make this happen.

We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew.

It is very difficult now in South Africa to find anyone who ever supported apartheid.

It was Christians, you know, not Pagans, who were responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not Pagans, who lynched people here in the South, who burned people at the stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ.

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.

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.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.

God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God's world.

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring.

It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

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.

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.

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'm so thankful a significant majority of Americans are saying no to military intervention. We've got to find a solution that will in the end be one that makes Syria a better country, a better people.

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument.

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.

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.

If you do not for give you actually are tying yourself to the perpetrator, that you are going to live your life as a victim. And you won't experience a liberation that comes from forgiving.

Somewhere deep inside us we seem to know that we are destined for something better than strife.

The quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another. Each time we help, and each time we harm, we have a dramatic impact on our world.

It is a remarkable feat to be able to see past the inhumanity of the behavior and recognize the humanity of the person committing the atrocious acts. This is not weakness. This is heroic strength, the noblest strength of the human spirit.

People are not born hating each other and wishing to cause harm. It is a learned condition.

In our own ways, we are all broken. Out of that brokenness, we hurt others. Forgiveness is the journey we take toward healing the broken parts. It is how we become whole again.

Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.

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.

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.

The pressure to succeed has a lot to do with why people overstep the line. It is a peculiar weakness of western culture where we have made a fetish of success.

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.

If you recall the happiest moments in your life, they are all from when you were doing something for somebody else.

Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. Forgiving means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin.

Give young people a greater voice. They are the future and they are much wiser than we give them credit for.

We learn from history that we don't learn from history!

My vote is my secret.

All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

Part 2. It is how we free ourselves from our past errors. It is how we are able to move forward into our future, unfettered by the mistakes we have made.

Part 1. When we are willing to let down our defences and look honestly at our actions, we find there is a great freedom in asking for forgiveness and great strength in admitting the wrong.

It is not easy to admit one's wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness. I am sorry are perhaps the three hardest words to say.

There are times when all of us have been thoughtless, selfish or cruel. But no act is unforgivable; no person is beyond redemption.

Forgiveness is simply about understanding that every one of us is both inherently good and inherently flawed.

Until we can forgive, we remain locked in our pain and locked out of the possibility of experiencing healing and freedom, locked out of the possibility of being at peace.

The simple truth is, we all make mistakes, and we all need forgiveness.

We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.

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.

We would like to see you departing peacefully.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

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.

I've never doubted that apartheid -- because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil -- was going to bite the dust eventually.

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.

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

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

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.

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.

Hate has no place in the house of God.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I'm quite shy.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

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.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

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 wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't.

But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.

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.

Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.