Desmond Tutu Quotes

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

The truth of who we are is that we are because we belong.

To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo.

You think sometimes that maybe if the person who hurt you is clobbered you will feel a little better. But it actually doesn't.

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

Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.

In order to turn around and do something better, we must first escape the vicious circle of self-righteousness and denial. And that calls for the humility to say "I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

Never let anyone make you feel inferior for being who you are. When you live the life you were meant to live, in freedom and dignity

As human beings, even if we were to have tried to forget the past, if you dealt with it in a cavalier fashion, it would return to haunt you.

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?

Brothers and sisters of Egypt, you have given the world the most precious gift: the belief that ultimately right will prevail.

You must show the world that you abhor fighting.

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

And every human being is precious.

We can only be human together.

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.

We will only truly be free when those in bondage are finally free

The world's forests are a shared stolen treasure that we must put back for our children's future

It was spine tingling, actually, when you saw how people kept saying, "Release Nelson Mandela," and meaning really, "Release all of our political prisoners."

The world is awful but also the world is beautiful. Human beings are awful, but ultimately human beings are tremendous.

God wants to set the oppressed free from being oppressed and the oppressors free from oppressing.

We pray that Aung San Suu Kyi and her country are now on a path to freedom

People took some part of us and used it to discriminate against us. In our case, it was our ethnicity; it's precisely the same thing for sexual orientation.

God could have created us to be automatons who were always choosing the right side, making the right decision. It is an incredible thing, God said "I want persons" who therefore have freedom.

God is on the side of the oppressed.

People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable

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

The devastation wreaked by landmines is not only horrendous but immoral

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.

I am passionately opposed to the death penalty for anyone . . . I think, myself, that it is an obscenity . . .

You are not an afterthought, you are not an accident.

If we are going to bring about change, then men, for goodness sake, stand up and stand for the right. And I say, ‘power to the women.

The final and full revelation of God is not a book, it is a person. Jesus Christ.

We can be human only together. A person is a person to other persons.

I hope that you will be amongst those young people who say we worked to change the world. We worked to make the world a more gentle, a more compassionate, a more caring world.

No future without forgiveness.

I have voted for the ANC, but I would very sadly not be able to vote for them after the way things have gone.

When we look at a conflict, it is so often rooted in injustice, prejudice, competition for resources, poverty, poor governance and corruption.

There is no justice in killing in the name of justice.

When I care about black liberation, it is because I care about white liberation.

My flock is black, my flock is white. One has got to say to our people, "I love you. I care for you, enormously." And when I care about black liberation, it is because I care about white liberation.

If you are invisible, you are vulnerable. Birth Registration must be everyone's priority. Let's make all children visible and let's give every child a birthday!

I will never tell anyone to pick up a gun. But I will pray for the man who picks up a gun, pray that he will be less cruel than he might otherwise have been.

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

Revenge has a way of corroding you, the revenger. You know it doesn't heal you.

We mustn't romanticize suffering. It can turn people bitter and hard, although it does seem to have been almost indispensable in making people into the kind of leaders that we admire.

I regard Abraham as my ancestor. Some of the greatest inspiration I have got has come from what we call the Old Testament prophets and what Jews would say "our prophets."

There is no religion in fact that I know that encourages or propagates violence in that its adherents should carry out.

Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously...drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens our entire existence.