Quotes By Desmond Tutu

I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Oh, 1994, April 27. There won't be a day like that ever again. I mean, the sky was blue, with a blueness that had never been there before.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

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

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.

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.

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.

It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

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.

In the Bible, we first encounter God when he sides with a bunch of slaves against a powerful Pharaoh, an act of grace freely given.

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.

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.

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.

Hate has no place in the house of God.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.

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

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

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.