Desmond Tutu Quotes

I'm actually very humbled listening to His Holiness,' the Archbishop said, 'because I've frequently mentioned to people the fact of his serenity and his calm and joyfulness. We would probably have said 'in spite of' the adversity, but it seems like he's saying 'because of' the adversity that this has evolved for him.

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.

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument.

VICTORY IS OURS Goodness is stronger than evil; Love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; Life is stronger than death; Victory is ours through Him who loves us. DESMOND TUTU.

The moment for which I had waited so long came and I folded my ballot paper and cast my vote. Wow! I shouted, ‘Yippee!' It was giddy stuff. It was like falling in love. The sky looked blue and more beautiful. I saw the people in a new light. They were beautiful, they were transfigured. I too was transfigured. It was dreamlike.

Once you have been able to forgive, the final step is to either renew or release the relationship you have with the one who has harmed you. Indeed, even if you never speak to the person again, even if you never see them again, even if they are dead, they live on in ways that affect your life profoundly.

When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.

Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.

When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.

Transformation begins in you, wherever you are, whatever has happened, however you are suffering. Transformation is always possible. We do not heal in isolation. When we reach out and connect with one another—when we tell the story, name the hurt, grant forgiveness, and renew or release the relationship—our suffering begins to transform.

Giving the emotion a name is the way we come to understand how what happened affected us. After we've told the facts of what happened, we must face our feelings. We are each hurt in our own unique ways, and when we give voice to this pain, we begin to heal it.

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.

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.

We are always at our best when compassion enables us to recognize the unique pressures and singular stories of the people on the other side of our conflicts.

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.

When you set out to change the world, the job seems insurmountable, but each of us can do his or her small part to effect change. We change the world when we choose to create a world of forgiveness in our own hearts and minds.

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

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

None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

The miracle was the result of the negotiated settlement. There would have been no negotiated settlement and so no new democratic South Africa had the negotiators on one side insisted that all perpetrators be brought to trial. While the Allies could pack up and go home after Nuremberg, we in South Africa had to live with one another.

My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma.

There is a story. . . which is fairly well known, told about when missionaries came to Africa, that they had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. And then they said, Let us pray, and we dutifully shut our eyes. And when we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible.

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.

It may be a procession of faithful failures that enriches the soil of godly success. Faithful actions are not religious acts. They are not even necessary actions undertaken by people of faith. Faithful actions, whether they are marked by success or they end in failure, are actions that are compelled by goodness.

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.

Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.

If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You're going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It's like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.

Though wrong gratifies in the moment, good yields its gifts over a lifetime.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

And every human being is precious.

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.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

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

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

We do not need to succumb to the temptation to meet such a violation with retaliation. The only way to heal this hurt is to give voice to what ails us. It is only in this way that we can keep our pain and loss from taking root inside us. It is only in this way that we have a chance for freedom.

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

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

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

This is what healing demands. Behavior that is hurtful, shameful, abusive, or demeaning must be brought into the fierce light of truth, and truth can be brutal.

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?

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

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

If you are neutral in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

God is not a diversion.

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

The rubric of proportionality had to be observed—that the means were proportional to the objective.