Desmond Tutu quotes page 1

born October 7, 1931, South African social rights activist, former Anglican bishop

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

When the white 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

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

We used to say to the apartheid government, "You may have the guns, you may have all this
power, but you have already lost. Come, join the winning side."
Desmond Tutu

Do a little bit of good wherever you are; it's those little bits of good put together that
overwhelm the world.
Desmond Tutu

Religion is like a knife: You can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.
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

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

For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government
was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic
and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.
Desmond Tutu

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
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 human rights.
Desmond Tutu

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.
Desmond Tutu

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace
can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we
condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of
military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach
the injured.
Desmond Tutu

I am 52 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,
whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that
wonderful biological attribute - a white skin.
Desmond Tutu

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

We refuse to be treated as the doormat for the government to wipe its jackboots on.
Desmond Tutu

You and I are created for transcendence, laughter, caring. God deliberately did not make the
world perfect, for God is looking for you and me to be fellow workers with God.
Desmond Tutu

We struggled against apartheid in South Africa, supported by people the world over, because
black people were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about;
our very skins. It is the same with sexual orientation. It is a given.
Desmond Tutu

Unless we work assiduously so that all of God's children, our brothers and sisters, members of
our one human family, all will enjoy basic human rights, the right to a fulfilled life, the right of
movement, of work, the freedom to be fully human, with a humanity measured by nothing less
than the humanity of Jesus Christ himself, then we are on the road inexorably to
self-destruction.
Desmond Tutu

Though wrong gratifies in the moment, good yields its gifts over a lifetime.
Desmond Tutu

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favour; 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

God created us for fellowship. God created us so that we should form the human family,
existing together because we were made for one another.
Desmond Tutu

Good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is
stronger than death.
Desmond Tutu

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.
Desmond Tutu

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