Desmond Tutu

"My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma"

"It may be a procession of faithful failures that enriches the soil of godly success. Faithful actions are not religious acts. They are not even necessary actions undertaken by people of faith. Faithful actions, whether they are marked by success or they end in failure, are actions that are compelled by goodness."

"Out of the cacophony of random suffering and chaos that can mark human life, the life artist sees or creates a symphony of meaning and order. A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives."

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

"A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family."

"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."

"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."

"Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you."

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

"Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another."