110+ Desmond Tutu Quotes On Ubuntu, Peace And Forgiveness

Desmond Tutu was a South African cleric, social rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He was a leader in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and became the first black Archbishop of Cape Town. He was also a vocal advocate for human rights and democracy, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Desmond Tutu on ubuntu, peace, forgiveness.

Top 10 Desmond Tutu Quotes

1. There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.
2. Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.
3. Our maturity will be judged by how well we are able to agree to disagree and yet continue to love one another, to care for one another, and cherish one another and seek the greater good of the other.
4. If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
5. You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
6. My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument."
7. It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.
8. My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma
9. My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
10. Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.

Desmond Tutu Image Quotes

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. — Desmond Tutu

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. — Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Short Quotes

• But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.
• The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons.
• It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future
• To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.
• Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
• Love your enemy; it will ruin his reputation.
• I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven.
• An abusive relationship should be easy to identify though often one of the most difficult to end.
• Fundamental rights belong to the human being just because you are a human being.
• I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Ubuntu

Ubuntu tells us that we can create a more peaceful world by striving for goodness in each moment, wherever we are. — Desmond Tutu

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language... It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.' — Desmond Tutu

Ubuntu really says if you want to be nice to yourself, start in a way by being nice to the other. — Desmond Tutu

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

You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Peace

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. — Desmond Tutu

True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute. — Desmond Tutu

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. — Desmond Tutu

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it - oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible. — Desmond Tutu

Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death. Victory is ours through Him who loved us. — Desmond Tutu

Peace without justice is an impossibility. — Desmond Tutu

We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God. — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

There is no peace precisely because there has been no justice. As painful and inconvenient as justice may be, we have seen that the alternative allowing accountability to fall by the wayside is worse. — Desmond Tutu

The reprisal against the suicide bomber does not bring peace. There is a suicide bomber, a reprisal and then a counter-reprisal. And it just goes on and on. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Forgiveness

True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know. — Desmond Tutu

Without memory, there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future. — Desmond Tutu

Without forgiveness, there's no future. — Desmond Tutu

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened. — 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

Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. Forgiveness is not pretending that things are other than the way they are. — Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness and reconciliation are not just ethereal, spiritual, other-worldly activities. They have to do with the real world. They are realpolitik, because in a very real sense, without forgiveness, there is no future. — 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 must not only speak about forgiveness and reconciliation, we must act on these principles. — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Joy

We are all connected. What unites us is our common humanity. I don't want to oversimplify things - but the suffering of a mother who has lost her child is not dependent on her nationality, ethnicity or religion. White, black, rich, poor, Christian, Muslim or Jew - pain is pain - joy is joy. — Desmond Tutu

God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God's world. — Desmond Tutu

We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Hope

It may seem daunting, but I am a prisoner of hope. We are more connected than ever before, we have more knowledge, and there are solutions if we work together. Today's technology is a great asset in encouraging global cooperation and understanding. — Desmond Tutu

I've often been a little concerned by people who say they are color-blind, people who claim, in some ways, not to be aware of race, and I hope that those who will be looking for a vision of the future will be a little more honest, and say race actually does matter. — Desmond Tutu

I wonder whether they have rum and Coke in Heaven? Maybe it's too mundane a pleasure, but I hope so -- as a sundowner. Except, of course, the sun never goes down there. Oh, man, this heaven is going to take some getting used to. — Desmond Tutu

Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value. — Desmond Tutu

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

God hopes that we are going to love God back. — Desmond Tutu

I'm not an optimist. I'm a prisoner of hope. — Desmond Tutu

South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world. — Desmond Tutu

I certainly don't think we [The Elders organization] are oracles but I would hope that over our lifetimes we have accumulated some useful experience and perhaps even a modicum of wisdom! We don't have all the answers. — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Education

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining. — Desmond Tutu

Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies. — Desmond Tutu

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible. — Desmond Tutu

Once you have women liberated, it's amazing how many other problems get resolved--pover ty, education, health. Women are the key in any community. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Injustice

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

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love. — Desmond Tutu

People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change. — Desmond Tutu

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There's nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible. — Desmond Tutu

When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound - our own and others' - and it can finally heal. — Desmond Tutu

It is for real that injustice and oppression will not have the last word. There was a time when Hitler looked like he was going to vanquish all of Europe, and where is he now? — Desmond Tutu

This is a moral universe, which means that, despite all the evidence that seems to be to the contrary, there is no way that evil and injustice and oppression and lies can have the last word. — Desmond Tutu

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

There’s no question about the reality of evil, of injustice, of suffering, but at the center of this existence is a heart beating with love. That you and I and all of us are incredible. I mean, we really are remarkable things. That we are, as a matter of fact, made for goodness. — Desmond Tutu

Easter says to us that despite everything to the contrary, his will for us will prevail, love will prevail over hate, justice over injustice and oppression, peace over exploitation and bitterness. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Family

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated. — 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

Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family - reading and writing and praying and thinking - too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels. — Desmond Tutu

The future of our fragile, beautiful planet home is in our hands. As God's family, we are stewards of God's creation. We can be wantonly irresponsible, or we can be caring and compassionate. God says, "I have set before you life and death... Choose life." — Desmond Tutu

We need to be accountable to God's family. Once we start living in a way that is people-friendly to all of God's family, we will also be environment-friendly. — Desmond Tutu

One day we'll wake up and discover we are family. — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

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

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Freedom

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice. — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

Are you able to restore to those people the time when their freedom was denied them? If you have evidence for goodness sake produce it in a court of law. People with power have an incredible capacity for wanting to be able to retain that power and don't like scrutiny. — Desmond Tutu

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 — Desmond Tutu

What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong. — Desmond Tutu

Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant. — Desmond Tutu

God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven. — Desmond Tutu

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

Freedom is indivisible. Whites can't enjoy their separate freedoms. They spend too much time and resources defending those freedoms instead of enjoying them. — Desmond Tutu

One of the things that has always surprised me is why Americans are so patient. Because they have seen not just that freedom has come, what they have seen is that there are some who used to be poor who are very rich, stinking rich some of them. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Inspiring

Do your little bit of good where you are. — Desmond Tutu

We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water. — Desmond Tutu

It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men. — Desmond Tutu

I have often said to my Jewish friends: "Please just remember where you come from. Remember Yahweh, who said to the Israelites, 'Treat the alien well with justice.'" Almost all of the passion that we have has come from the inspiration that we have got from the Jewish Scriptures. — Desmond Tutu

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." — Desmond Tutu

I think that because this is a moral universe, then right will prevail, goodness will prevail, compassion will prevail, laughter will prevail, love, caring, sharing will prevail. Because we are made for goodness. We are made for love. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Courageous

All of us experience fear, but when we confront and acknowledge it, we are able to turn it into courage. Being courageous does not mean never being scared; it means acting as you know you must even though you are undeniably afraid. — Desmond Tutu

I pray that politicians, lawmakers and religious leaders have the courage to support the choices terminally ill citizens make in departing Mother Earth with dignity and love. — Desmond Tutu

I am deeply moved by the warmth and courage of the Canadian people which I felt so strongly during my recent visit to your country. Your support of the struggle against apartheid restored me in my journey home and reassured me that many just people around the world are with us. — Desmond Tutu

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About People

Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are going to be compassionate, be prepared for action. — Desmond Tutu

I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote... — Desmond Tutu

We have a planet that is at risk, where resources don't have a permanent life. We are going to have to make the decision: are we going to survive or are we waiting for our extinction? One day we will wake up and find people are fighting not for oil but water. — Desmond Tutu

The pressure to succeed has a lot to do with why people overstep the line. It is a peculiar weakness of western culture where we have made a fetish of success. — 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

When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. — 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

Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction; we are already feeling the effects. — Desmond Tutu

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. — Desmond Tutu

At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I have said: 'Move your hands,' and I've said 'Look at your hands - different colors representing different people. You are the Rainbow People of God.' — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Africa

Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal. — 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

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

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. — Desmond Tutu

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument." [Address at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa, 23 November 2004] — Desmond Tutu

God looks at the Middle East, looks at Palestine. When you go to the Holy Land and see what's being done to the Palestinians at checkpoints, for us, it's the kind of thing we experienced in South Africa. — Desmond Tutu

When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens. — Desmond Tutu

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

We must stop climate change. And we can, if we use the tactics that worked in South Africa against the worst carbon emitters. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Quotes About Evil

We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil. — Desmond Tutu

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities. — Desmond Tutu

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

Making the truth public is a form of justice. This is a moral universe and you've got to take account of the fact that truth and lies and goodness and evil are things that matter. — Desmond Tutu

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

We are fundamentally good, and evil is an aberration. — Desmond Tutu

The only separation the Bible knows is between believers on the one hand and unbelievers on the other. Any other kind of separation, division, disunity is of the devil. It is evil and from sin. — Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu Famous Quotes And Sayings

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. — Desmond Tutu

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. — Desmond Tutu

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. — Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning. — Desmond Tutu

We are living in an historic moment. We are each called to take part in a great transformation. Our survival as a species is threatened by global warming, economic meltdown, and an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. Yet these threats offer an opportunity to awaken as an interconnected and beloved community. — Desmond Tutu

A person is a person through other persons; you can't be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships. — Desmond Tutu

I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place. — Desmond Tutu

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns? — 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

It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. And never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant. — Desmond Tutu

Too frequently we think we have to do spectacular things. Yet if we remember that the sea is actually made up of drops of water and each drop counts, each one of us can do our little bit where we are. Those little bits can come together and almost overwhelm the world. Each one of us can be an oasis of peace. — Desmond Tutu

If we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do belong together, that our destinies are bound up in one another's, that we can be free only together, that we can be human only together, then a glorious world would come into being where all of us lived harmoniously together as members of one family, the human family. — 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

I'm absolutely, utterly, and completely certain that God wouldn't be homophobic. I'd much rather go to hell - I really would much rather go to hell - than go to a homophobic heaven. — Desmond Tutu

It is quite exhilarating to speak about a God who has an incredible bias, a notorious bias in favor of the downtrodden. You look at Exodus and the Israelites' escape from a bottomless pit. God is not evenhanded. God is biased up to his eyebrows. — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

We can encourage more of our universities and municipalities, foundations, corporations, individuals and cultural institutions... to move their money out of the problem (fossil fuels) and into the solutions (renewable energy) — 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

The moment our dignity is undermined, we get up in arms and want to see our dignity restored - especially if we are humiliated. — Desmond Tutu

Is Zionism racism? I would say yes. It's a policy that to me looks like it has very many parallels with racism. The effect is the same. Whether you call it that or not is in a sense irrelevant. — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

If we have loved well while we were alive, there is life after death here-our love will go on for generations. — Desmond Tutu

I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity. — Desmond Tutu

The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life. — Desmond Tutu

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity - or because of their sexual orientation. — Desmond Tutu

Out of the cacophony of random suffering and chaos that can mark human life, the life artist sees or creates a symphony of meaning and order. A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives. — Desmond Tutu

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring. — Desmond Tutu

Catharsis is about cleansing and healing at one and the same time - healing memories and attitudes, healing the spirit and the heart. — Desmond Tutu

We struggled against apartheid because we were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about. It is the same with homosexuality. The orientation is a given, not a matter of choice. It would be crazy for someone to choose to be gay, given the homophobia that is present. — Desmond Tutu

That's the chief lesson I have learned: the texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail. — Desmond Tutu

Children learn about the nature of the world from their family. They learn about power and about justice, about peace and about compassion within the family. Whether we oppress or liberate our children in our relationships with them will determine whether they grow up to oppress and be oppressed or to liberate and be liberated. — Desmond Tutu

For both the offender and the victim, the pain is there, often unacknowledged and that is when it can cause harm through festering. When I ignore a physical wound, it does not go away. No, it festers and goes bad. — Desmond Tutu

Arrogance really comes from insecurity, and in the end our feeling that we are bigger than others is really the flip side of our feeling that we are smaller than others. — 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

As long as we fail to face up to the past and deal with it accordingly, the future will smack of corruption. — Desmond Tutu

Most people would say "Ah, Mahatma Gandhi, what a wonderful man, Mother Teresa, maybe Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama." And when you look at those people it's not the macho, aggressive, successful people, we may envy them, their bank balances and kind of thing, yes and for being successful. But we do not revere them. — Desmond Tutu

My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right. — Desmond Tutu

The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions — Desmond Tutu

No one is self-sufficient. And it's not a one-way thing- -the generosity of spirit from one side provokes a response in kind from the other side. — Desmond Tutu

I have no doubt that in the future, the laws that criminalize human love and commitment will look the way the apartheid laws do to us now, so obviously wrong — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

Our Lord wanted us to be Christ-like. Christ-like doesn't mean not having faults. It means that you do actually have a capacity to draw out the good that is in others. — Desmond Tutu

Every praying person, every person who has an encounter with God, must have a passionate concern for his or her brother and sister, his or her neighbor. To treat any of these as if he were less than the child of God is to deny the validity of one's spiritual existence. — 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

If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God. — Desmond Tutu

If we are to say that religion cannot be concerned with politics then we are really saying that there is a substantial part of human life in which God's writ does not run. If it is not God's, then whose is it? Who is in charge if not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. — Desmond Tutu

Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional. — Desmond Tutu

Life Lessons by Desmond Tutu

1. Desmond Tutu teaches us to always strive for justice and equality, no matter the circumstances. He encourages us to stand up for what is right and to be compassionate and understanding towards others.
2. He reminds us of the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation, and that peace and harmony can be achieved through dialogue and understanding.
3. He also encourages us to be humble and to always strive to make the world a better place, no matter how small the effort.