Quotes by Desmond Tutu

-“A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.”

-“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.“

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

-“I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.”

-“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”

-“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

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

-“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”

-“Without forgiveness, there's no future.”

-“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.”

-“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. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, ‘Now is that political or social?’ He said, ‘I feed you.’ Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.”

-“So I never doubted that ultimately we were going to be free, because ultimately, I knew there was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life.”

-“We received death threats, yes, but you see, when you are in a struggle, there are going to have to be casualties, and why should you be exempt?”

-“But the other, more exhilarating than anything that I have ever experienced -- and something I hadn't expected -- to discover that we have an extraordinary capacity for good.”

-“Human beings are fundamentally good. The aberration, in fact, is the evil one, for God created us ultimately for God, for goodness, for laughter, for joy, for compassion, for caring.”

-“History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene."

-"Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant"

-"I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum."

-"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 recognise that we are humans too."

-"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of human rights"

-"We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death"

-"At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I have said: 'Move your hands,' and I've said 'Look at your hands - different colors representing different people. You are the Rainbow People of God.'"

-"It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong."

-"There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew."

-"Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion."

-"Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations."

-"South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world."

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

-“Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.”

-“We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of freedom! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history.”

All quotes by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best night and day to make you everyone else, means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight, and to never stop fighting."
-- e.e. cummings

"Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge."
-- Gordon W. Allport

"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot."
-- Horace Greeley

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."
-- Aldous Huxley

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
-- Joe Ancis

"Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win."
-- Jonathan Kozol

"Wanting to be someone you're not is a waste of the person you are."
-- Kurt Cobain

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi

“Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.”
-- Martin Fraquhar Tupper

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
-- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.”
-- Seneca
"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech."
-- Susan Sontag

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
---Winston Churchill

"Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer."
-- the Dalai Lama