Desmond Tutu Quotes

God would come down and lead us out of bondage. And God led us out of bondage.

Each one of us is not a divine afterthought.

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.

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.

We are fundamentally good, and evil is an aberration.

We were an extraordinary paradox. We are finite creatures made for the infinite.

We are going to have to be very careful that we give people the hope that freedom is actually better than unfreedom.

Ultimately, suffering is always political with all kinds of justifications - there are those who justify Israel's occupation of land as being a fulfillment of what God had promised.

When the humility of someone is undermined, whether I like it or not mine is undermined as well.

Every situation of justice is an occasion where someone is being humiliated and they want to restore their dignity.

You can find justification for slavery in the Bible. Some say this is what the Bible says and that closes the argument.

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

I think that most of us would say that ubuntu basically speaks about what it means to be human.

People almost always imagine that life is going to be better in town and that the streets of the town are paved with gold.

God is forever using especially young people, not oldies like us, God likes using young people.

Naming a center after a person who is still alive can make it seem that an individual somehow on their own was able to accomplish what he accomplished.

We so desperately long for all of us to learn that we are meant for one another. We are meant for complementarity. The Syrians are members of our family.

Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.

You have seen after Katrina just what failures there are in American Society.

Most of us have made the mistake that after they crossed the Red Sea they spent 40 years in the wilderness fighting amongst each other.

I have a lot of time for young people.

We are interconnected.

I'm so, so thrilled that [Pope Francis] is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world.

Forgiving is good for your health.

There are very few institutions that give prizes to people who may not have got to be number one, but are possibly better at coaxing the best out of others.

You don't think we have a copyright to forgiveness, it is done by people everywhere.

When you are in love you strive to do the things that will please your lover.

As a teacher in order not to have to answer too many questions, you stretch your answers.

There are levels of poverty in South Africa that are totally unacceptable.

The leaders that the world admires seem almost all to be people who haven't had things quite so smooth or easy in their lives.

That so called "original sin" does not know any racial discrimination.

A person who is assured of the love of God will see his fellow men in a different light and treat them and himself differently, and of course this also applies to business leaders.

One of the things we might want to learn when considering the failings of others is not to gloat because someone else has tripped up.

Race should not be used to claim privileges and rights for one group, exclusively, which are denied other different groups. Then that is an illegitimate use of race.

God is trying to woo us into a love affair with God.

Does taking the life of the perpetrator return your mom? No.

Those of us who came to be Christians get to remember that forgiveness cost God the death of God's son. It's an expensive thing in many ways.

Forgiving is not easy. It is not cheap.

Human beings have a vested interest in being trustworthy.

God hopes that we are going to love God back.

We are given an autonomy and the real autonomy... and God would much rather we went freely to hell than compel us to go to heaven.

Some people are able to use Bible as a means of opposing injustice, whereas others are able to find justification.

I hope that when the time comes, I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life's journey in the manner of my choice.

People will use their religion to justify virtually anything.

People in apartheid South Africa can tell you that God cursed black people when they cursed Him. And so the hermetic people were condemned to be drawers of water and of wood.

God loved me before I actually was.

I am a Nobel Peace laureate and my business should be to try to bring stability, not to be a red rag to bulls.

Too many people think that reconciliation means you soft-pedal differences.

You ask when is it that you can say yes we have had enough. It is enough revenge and I think now we have restored the equilibrium. It never happens!

God has been incredible in creating us to be persons.