Desmond Tutu

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

“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.”

“This is what healing demands. Behavior that is hurtful, shameful, abusive, or demeaning must be brought into the fierce light of truth, and truth can be brutal.”

“God is patient with us to become the God's children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping.”

“Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.”

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

“We learn from history that we don't learn from history!”

“The universe can take quite a while to deliver.”

“Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?”

“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.”

“You must show the world that you abhor fighting.”

“I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.”

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

“Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God’s grace and God’s love for us… Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others. - God Has a Dream, p. 86.”

“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.”

“As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.”

“In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute - a white skin.”

“I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.”

“If you are neutral in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

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