Tutu Quotes & Sayings

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

Oh, 1994, April 27. There won't be a day like that ever again. I mean, the sky was blue, with a blueness that had never been there before. — Desmond Tutu

Many people ask me what I have learned from all of the experiences in my life, and I say unhesitatingly: People are wonderful. It is true. People really are wonderful. — Desmond Tutu

Beware when you take on the Church of God. Others have tried and have bitten the dust. — Desmond Tutu

Reconciliation means that those who have been on the underside of history must see that there is a qualitative difference between repression and freedom. And for them, freedom translates into having a supply of clean water, having electricity on tap; being able to live in a decent home and have a good job; to be able to send your children to school and to have accessible health care. I mean, what's the point of having made this transition if the quality of life of these people is not enhanced and improved? If not, the vote is useless.'
-archbishop Desmond Tutu, chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, 2001 — Naomi Klein

Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes. — 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

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

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

If you recall the happiest moments in your life, they are all from when you were doing something for somebody else. — 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

Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit's life, you will never feel lonely. — Desmond Tutu

I believe in MasterPeace. World leaders cannot push back armed conflict alone. We need the whole world to make this happen. — Desmond Tutu

People are able to justify immense cruelty and say that it is something that is sanctioned by their faith. — 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

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

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

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

And God says to all of us, you are no chicken; you are an eagle. Fly, eagle, fly. And God wants us to shake ourselves, spread our pinions, and then lift off and soar and rise, and rise toward the confident and the good and the beautiful. Rise towards the compassionate and the gentle and the caring. Rise to become what God intends us to be-eagles, not chickens. — Desmond Tutu

No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it — Desmond Tutu

I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion. — Desmond Tutu

Most of the leading figures of the Old Testament were polygamists. Abraham had several wives and concubines. If they wanted, they could say this was approved in the Bible. — Desmond Tutu

We have allowed the interests of capital to outweigh the interests of human beings and our Earth. — Desmond Tutu

Trust is one of the fundamentals of human existence. We need to be able to trust one another. A man who can no longer trust anyone will become sick. — 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

When I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator. You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person too — Desmond Tutu

To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralysing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar. — Desmond Tutu

But suffering from a life-threatening disease also helped me have a different attitude and perspective. It has given a new intensity to life, for I realize how much I used to take for granted-the love and devotion of my wife, the laughter and playfulness of my grandchildren, the glory of a splendid sunset, the dedication of my colleagues. The disease has helped me acknowledge my own mortality, with deep thanksgiving for the extraordinary things that have happened in my life, not least in recent times. What a spectacular vindication it has been, in the struggle against apartheid, to live to see freedom come, to have been involved in finding the truth and reconciling the differences of those who are the future of our nation. — 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

I'm so thankful a significant majority of Americans are saying no to military intervention. We've got to find a solution that will in the end be one that makes Syria a better country, a better people. We can be human only together. — Desmond Tutu

Stuff me in a tutu and let's screen experimental videos all day. — Sam Lipsyte

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

Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past - not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us. — 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

An abusive relationship should be easy to identify though often one of the most difficult to end. — Desmond Tutu

Ignoring Gray Porter is like ignoring an elephant in a tut. A really hot elephant in a tutu ... a very manly tutu. -Jess — Anne Eliot

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

Look at Nelson Mandela. Why did people want to follow him? He's a lousy speaker. If he hadn't got all the other things, you wouldn't spend time listening to him. But people actually don't listen to what he's saying, in a way. They are listening to him because he has communicated that he is ready to put his life on the line. — 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

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. — 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

Forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up and get up with dignity, to begin anew. — Desmond Tutu

Truth be told, my head was spinning so much that the car could have been doing interpretive dance in a lilac tutu and I might not have noticed. — Jim Butcher

We must embrace our differences, even celebrate our diversity. We must glory in the fact that God created each of us as unique human beings. God created us different, but God did not create us for separation. God created us different that we might recognize our need for one another. We must reverence our uniqueness, reverence everything that makes us what we are: our language, our culture, our religious tradition. — Desmond Tutu

The devastation wreaked by landmines is not only horrendous but immoral — Desmond Tutu

Cultivate your forgiveness with your friends, with your family, with strangers, and with yourself. Remind yourself that every person you encounter carries a sorrow and a struggle. Recognize that we all share a fundamental humanity. Model the — Desmond Tutu

Forgiving is a gift to the forgiver as well as to the perpetrator. — Desmond Tutu

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

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too. — Desmond Tutu

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human ... you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, 'My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.' We belong in a bundle of life. — 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

He's a tremendous breath of fresh air. The things he [Pope Francis] has done in a short period of time: the fact that he does not live in a huge papal mansion and just dropped by in the dining room where ordinary people have meals. You think of his background, where he didn't use limousines in South America, that he used public transport. I'm so, so thrilled that he is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world. — Desmond Tutu

I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: 'You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a pity he's not a Christian'? I don't think that is the case - because, you see, God is not a Christian. — Desmond Tutu

Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defense budgets would make a real difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives. — Desmond Tutu

One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God. — Desmond Tutu

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

Forgiveness is something that we are often asked to grant and very few of us ever have the roadmap of how to get from the pain that we have experienced to being able to forgive someone. — Desmond Tutu

The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses. — Desmond Tutu

When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All — 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

Life is funny and we are really funny, especially when we get to be hoity toity; we can be so ridiculous. Life is fun. — Desmond Tutu

If everyone who wants to see an end to poverty, hunger and suffering speaks out, then the noise will be deafening. — Desmond Tutu

Who can stop climate change? We can. You and you and you, and me. And it is not just that we can stop it, we have a responsibility to do so that began in the genesis of humanity, when God commanded the earliest human inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, "to till it and keep it". To "keep" it; not to abuse it, not to make as much money as possible from it, not to destroy it — Desmond Tutu

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. — Desmond Tutu

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

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

There is no religion in fact that I know that encourages or propagates violence in that its adherents should carry out. — 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

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't. — Desmond Tutu

I want my commitment to ending girl marriage to be equal to my commitment to ending apartheid. — Desmond Tutu

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

The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons. — Desmond Tutu

I would love to know who killed my father. So would my brother." Her next words stunned me and left me breathless. "We want to forgive them. We want to forgive, but we don't know who to forgive. — 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

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

So often when people hear about the suffering in our world, they feel guilty, but rarely does guilt actually motivate action like empathy or compassion. Guilt paralyzes and causes us to deny and avoid what makes us feel guilty. The goal is to replace our guilt with generosity. We all have a natural desire to help and to care, and we simply need to allow ourselves to give from our love without self-reproach. We each must do what we can. This is all that God asks of us.
- , God Has a Dream, p. 87-88 — 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

There is no justice in killing in the name of justice. — Desmond Tutu

You might have thought that a world such as ours, so hard-nosed and cynical and brash, would have very little time for transcendence, spiritual values of goodness and compassion, gentleness, and caring, but we actually do experience them. — Desmond Tutu

I'd rather go to hell than worship a homophobic God. — Desmond Tutu

I think we need to grow in our self-assurance that is not scared of being challenged, that the truth we uphold can stand up to the closest possible scrutiny. — Desmond Tutu

I don't struggle to forgive people. I find it quite easy to forgive people for the harms that they have inflicted on me. What I do find challenging is to forgive people for the harms they inflict on my daughters and family. So, I find it challenging when I see somebody else experience hurt. I also look at my children and family and then I realize, I don't stand inside their skin and that is for me a forgiveness practice I still need to engage in. — Desmond Tutu

One might go on to say that perhaps justice fails to be done only if the concept we entertain of justice is retributive justice, whose chief goal is to be punitive, so that the wronged party is really the state, something impersonal, which has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which was characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment. In the spirit of ubuntu, the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he has injured by his offense. — 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. — 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 ... that is what has upheld the morale of our people, to know that in the end good will prevail. — Desmond Tutu

If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is WOMEN! — 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

White people found that freedom was indeed indivisible. We had kept saying in the dark days of apartheid's oppression that white South Africans would never be truly free until we blacks were free as well. Many thought it was just another Tutu slogan, irresponsible as all his others had been. Today they were experiencing it as a reality. I used to refer to an intriguing old film The Defiant Ones, in which Sidney Poitier was one of the stars. Two convicts escape from a chain gang. They are manacled together, the one white, the other black. They fall into a ditch with slippery sides. The one convict claws his way nearly to the top and out of the ditch but cannot make it because he is bound to his mate, who has been left at the bottom in the ditch. The only way they can make it is together as they strive up and up and up together and eventually make their way over the side wall and out. — 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

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 are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We all belong to this family, this human family, God's family. — Desmond Tutu

I have struggled against tyranny. I didn't do that in order to substitute another. — 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

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

When people decide they want to be free, there is nothing that can stop them. — 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

We can enjoy a self-assurance that doesn't depend on the state of things outside ourselves, be it downturns or booms or whatever. — 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 ... Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful ... and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things. — Desmond Tutu

There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time. — Desmond Tutu

When we ignore the pain, it grows bigger and bigger, and like an abscess that is never drained, eventually it will rupture. When that happens, it can reach into every area of our lives - our health, our families, our jobs, our friendships, our faith, and our very ability to feel joy may be diminished by the fallout from resentments, anger, and hurts that are never named. — Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness is the way we return what has been taken from us and restore the love and kindness and trust that has been lost. With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world. — Desmond Tutu