Quotes by Desmond Tutu

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

— Desmond Tutu

Wisdom

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

— Desmond Tutu

Hope

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

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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

— Desmond Tutu

Wisdom

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

— Desmond Tutu

Life

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

— Desmond Tutu

Life

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

— Desmond Tutu

Love

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

Hope

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

— Desmond Tutu

Friendship

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

Life

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

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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

— Desmond Tutu

Happiness

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

— Desmond Tutu

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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.

— Desmond Tutu

Love

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

Life

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

— Desmond Tutu

Education

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

Success

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

— Desmond Tutu

Hope

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

— Desmond Tutu

Freedom

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

— Desmond Tutu

Wisdom