Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu

"God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion."
51 Quotes
"God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion."
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
"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
"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."
Desmond Tutu
"I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum."
Desmond Tutu
"When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish."
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
"Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value."
Desmond Tutu
"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness."
Desmond Tutu
"When God grabs you by the scruff of the neck then although theoretically you have a freedom to say 'no', in another sense, actually, you can't say no because it's like Jeremiah. 'God, you have cheated me. You called me to be a prophet against the people that I love, and all that I proclaim is words of doom and judgement.' And yet if I say "I will shut up", I can't."
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
"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
"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
"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
"Forgiveness is the only way to heal ourselves and to be free from the past. Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound to the chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive the person who harmed us, that person will hold the keys to our happiness, that person will be our jailor. When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberator."
Desmond Tutu
"The fact is, rape is utterly commonplace in all our cultures. It is part of the fabric of everyday life, yet we all act as if it’s something shocking and extraordinary whenever it hits the headlines. We remain silent, and so we condone it…Until rape, and the structures – sexism, inequality, tradition – that make it possible, are part of our dinner-table conversation with the next generation, it will continue. Is it polite and comfortable to talk about it? No. Must we anyway? Yes.”‘To protect our children, we must talk to them about rape"
Desmond Tutu
"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
"If you are neutral in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
Desmond Tutu
"We learn from history that we don't learn from history!"
Desmond Tutu
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