Quotations by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Quotations | Speeches | Poetry
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African cleric and activist
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African cleric and activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. Tutu was elected and ordained the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa ). He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and the Magubela prize for liberty in 1986. He is committed to stopping global AIDS and has served as the honorary chairman for the Global AIDS Alliance. In February 2007 he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India. (Source: Wikipedia)
Quotations
A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.
Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.
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; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
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.
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.
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.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
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.
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 may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.
We would like to see you departing peacefully.
What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?
When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.
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.
Without forgiveness, there's no future.
You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
You must show the world that you abhor fighting.
