Desmond Tutu Quotes

In our own ways, we are all broken. Out of that brokenness, we hurt others. Forgiveness is the journey we take toward healing the broken parts. It is how we become whole again.

My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma

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.

I spoke once at Cambridge University in England and among other things I said, “Now the boycott of South African goods is lifted.” After my address a middle-aged woman accosted me and said, “Archbishop, I hear you and cerebrally I agree with you. But my parents brought me up to boycott South African goods and I have brought up my children to boycott South African goods too. So even now, when I buy South African goods I am furtive because all of me says I am doing something wrong.” I doubt that any other cause has evoked the same passion and dedication as the anti-apartheid cause and I doubt that any other country has been prayed for by so many people so intensely and for so long as has my motherland. In a sense, if a miracle had to happen anywhere, then South Africa would have been the obvious candidate.

I want us to see a resurgence, a revival, a renaissance of so many of the wonderful attributes and values that Africa has. You know we have had a jurisprudence, a penology in Africa which is not retributive. We’ve had a jurisprudence which was restorative. When people quarreled in the traditional setting, the main intention was not to punish the miscreant but to restore good relations. For Africa is concerned, or was concerned, about relationship, about the wholeness of relationship. That is something we can bring to the world, a world that is polarized, a world that is fragmented, a world that destroys people.

Do a little bit of good wherever you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world

There is nothing more difficult than waking someone who is only pretending to be asleep.

What about evil, you may ask? Aren’t some people just evil, just monsters, and aren’t such people just unforgivable? I do believe there are monstrous and evil acts, but I do not believe those who commit such acts are monsters or evil. To relegate someone to the level of monster is to deny that person’s ability to change and to take away that person’s accountability for his or her actions and behavior.

Forgiveness is one of the key ideas in this world. Forgiveness is not just some nebulous, vague idea that one can easily dismiss. It has to do with uniting people through practical politics. Without forgiveness there is no future.

When we can accept both our humanity and the perpetrator's we can write a new story. One in which we are no longer cast as a victim, but a survivor, even perhaps a hero.

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

Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can't ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people.

Sometimes you want to whisper in God's ear, "God, we know you are in charge, but why don't you make it slightly more obvious?"

Despair can come from deep grief, but it can also be a defense against the risks of bitter disappointment and shattering heartbreak. Resignation and cynicism are easier, more self-soothing postures that do not require raw vulnerability and tragic risk of hope. To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one's chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.

Our nation sought to rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and personhood of those who for so long had been silenced, had been turned into anonymous, marginalized ones. Now they would be able to tell their stories, they would remember, and in remembering would be acknowledged to be persons with an inalienable personhood. Our country’s negotiators rejected the two extremes and opted for a “third way,” a compromise between the extreme of Nuremberg trials and blanket amnesty or national amnesia. And that third way was granting amnesty to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure relating to the crime for which amnesty was being sought. It was the carrot of possible freedom in exchange for truth and the stick was, for those already in jail, the prospect of lengthy prison sentences and, for those still free, the probability of arrest and prosecution and imprisonment. The option South Africa chose raises