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Desmond Tutu
Quotes by Desmond Tutu
Quotes by Desmond Tutu
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.”
Desmond Tutu
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
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
“Without forgiveness, there's no future.”
Desmond Tutu
“Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.”
Desmond Tutu
“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”
Desmond Tutu
“The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.”
Desmond Tutu
“If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”
Desmond Tutu
“But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.”
Desmond Tutu
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
Desmond Tutu
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't.”
Desmond Tutu
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“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.”
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
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
Desmond Tutu
“A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.”
Desmond Tutu
“It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.”
Desmond Tutu
“Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?”
Desmond Tutu
“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”
Desmond Tutu
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“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.”
Desmond Tutu
“We would like to see you departing peacefully.”
Desmond Tutu
“What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?”
Desmond Tutu
“Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”
Desmond Tutu
“For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.”
Desmond Tutu
