Desmond Tutu Quotes

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

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

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

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

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

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

A person is a person through other persons.

Be able to laugh at yourself. It frees us from self-importance.

In the end, we are all just walking each other home.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

When will we learn that human beings are members of a single tribe, sharing a common destiny?

We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know.

We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

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

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.

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 Quotes part 2

We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea.

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.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.

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.

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

We must understand that we are collectively responsible for upholding the dignity of all people.

The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed.

To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

The only way to change the world is to change ourselves.

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness.

We are different so that we can know our need of one another.

In essence, we are all the same human beings who, through a lack of self-knowledge, allow ourselves to be swayed by judgments of others and fall into the trap of labeling and categorizing people.

We are the prisoners of our own prejudices, and we should be the liberators of each other.

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

The world will never be the same again because of what happened to a beaten, crucified corpse outside Jerusalem’s walls 2,000 years ago.

We are all connected to each other in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves.

We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves.

Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.

What is important is not escaping unscathed, but remaining brave.

When we begin to see other people as God sees them, a wonderful thing happens. They come alive for us.

We must strive to be good ancestors, leaving a positive legacy for future generations.

The greatest wealth is not financial wealth, but the wealth of love, kindness, and compassion that we can share with others.

Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are.

Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.

My father always used to say, ‘Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.’ Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters.

Religion should be a positive force. It should be about love and compassion, not about judgment and division.

Our purpose is to be compassionate, to care for one another, and to respect the dignity and worth of every individual.

The time is always ripe to do right.

You can’t belong to a tribe without carrying its sadness and scars.

The time for healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

We need to exert ourselves that much more, and break out of the vicious cycle of dependence imposed on us by the financially powerful: those in command of immense market power and those who dare to fashion the world in their own image.