Desmond Tutu Quotes

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

~ Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.

~ Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Desmond Tutu

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

~ Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Desmond Tutu

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

~ Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Desmond Tutu

Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.

~ Desmond Tutu

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

~ Desmond Tutu

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

~ Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Desmond Tutu

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it - oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

~ Desmond Tutu

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

~ Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Desmond Tutu

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

~ Desmond Tutu