Quotes By Desmond Tutu

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

I mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.

We would like to see you departing peacefully.

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.

When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it's again not people who are intrinsically evil.

You must show the world that you abhor fighting.

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

I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

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?