Best 436 quotes of Desmond Tutu on MyQuotes

I am passionately opposed to the death penalty for anyone . . . I think, myself, that it is an obscenity . . .

I believe history teaches us a categorical lesson: that once a people are determined to become free, then nothing in the world can stop them reaching their goal.

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

I can't for the life of me imagine that God would say, 'I will punish you because you are black; you should have been white. I will punish you because you are a woman; you should have been a man. I punish you because you are homosexual; you ought to have been heterosexual. I can't, I can't for the life of me believe that that is how God sees things.

I certainly don't think we [The Elders organization] are oracles but I would hope that over our lifetimes we have accumulated some useful experience and perhaps even a modicum of wisdom! We don't have all the answers.

I don't often want to speak. I try to be a reasonable person and to be diplomatic, but you go to that place and you see the settlements, you see what has happened to the land that was owned by the Palestinians.

I don't often want to speak. I try to be a reasonable person and to be diplomatic, but you go to that place and you see the settlements, you see what has happened to the land that was owned by the Palestinians. I have often said to my Jewish friends: "Please just remember where you come from. Remember Yahweh, who said to the Israelites, 'Treat the alien well with justice.'

I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person.

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.

I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity.

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

If forgiving depended on the culprit owning up, then the victim would always be at the mercy of the perpetrator. The victim would be bound in the shackles of victimhood.

If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.

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

If we are to say that religion cannot be concerned with politics then we are really saying that there is a substantial part of human life in which God's writ does not run. If it is not God's, then whose is it? Who is in charge if not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do belong together, that our destinies are bound up in one another's, that we can be free only together, that we can be human only together, then a glorious world would come into being where all of us lived harmoniously together as members of one family, the human family.

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

If we succeed in empowering girls, we'll succeed in everything else.

If you are going to be a leader, you must have a record where people saw you are standing up against injustice at a risk. Then that builds up your stock of credibility so that, when you speak on another occasion about a different thing, people will pay attention.

If you are invisible, you are vulnerable. Birth Registration must be everyone's priority. Let's make all children visible and let's give every child a birthday!

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

If you do not for give you actually are tying yourself to the perpetrator, that you are going to live your life as a victim. And you won't experience a liberation that comes from forgiving.

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

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There's nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.

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.

I have absolutely no objection to performance and success as long as they don't become false idols and threaten to rule our lives.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

I have no doubt that in the future, the laws that criminalize human love and commitment will look the way the apartheid laws do to us now, so obviously wrong

I have often said to my Jewish friends: "Please just remember where you come from. Remember Yahweh, who said to the Israelites, 'Treat the alien well with justice.'" Almost all of the passion that we have has come from the inspiration that we have got from the Jewish Scriptures.

I have seen firsthand how injustice gets overlooked when the victims are powerless or vulnerable, when they have no one to speak up for them and no means of representing themselves to a higher authority. Animals are in precisely that position. Unless we are mindful of their interests and speak out loudly on their behalf, abuse and cruelty go unchallenged.

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

I have voted for the ANC, but I would very sadly not be able to vote for them after the way things have gone.

I hope that when the time comes, I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life's journey in the manner of my choice.

I hope that you will be amongst those young people who say we worked to change the world. We worked to make the world a more gentle, a more compassionate, a more caring world.

I'm not an optimist. I'm a prisoner of hope.

I'm absolutely, utterly, and completely certain that God wouldn't be homophobic. I'd much rather go to hell - I really would much rather go to hell - than go to a homophobic heaven.

I'm coming to believe more and more in the truth that everything we do has consequences. A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear.

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.

I'm so, so thrilled that [Pope Francis] is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world.

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.

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.

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

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

In most, when you go to church, most churches when they have images of the good shepherd, they show Jesus carrying a nice fluffy lamb. Now fluffy little lambs don't stray from their mommy's. The sheep that will stray is the most obstreperous, troublesome one.

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.

In order to turn around and do something better, we must first escape the vicious circle of self-righteousness and denial. And that calls for the humility to say "I'm sorry. Please forgive me.

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.

Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family - reading and writing and praying and thinking - too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels.