Famous Quotes

Quotes by Desmond Tutu

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.
• Do your little bit of good where you are its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
• Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.
• Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.
• 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.
• 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.
• God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.
• Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.
• I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
• In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.
• In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.
• In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.
• 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.
• 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.
• Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.
• 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.
• 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.
• The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.
• 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.
• The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
• 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.
• We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.
• 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 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.
• Without forgiveness, there's no future.
• You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
• Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.