Quotes By Desmond Tutu

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

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

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.

Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.

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

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.

I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

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

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.

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

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.

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.

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.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I'm quite shy.

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.

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.

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

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

And every human being is precious.

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

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

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

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

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.