DTDesmond Tutu

62 collected words

Desmond Tutu

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

Forgiveness is the way we return what has been taken from us and restore the love and kindness and trust that has been lost. With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world.

Desmond Tutu / quote

02Undated

This is what healing demands. Behavior that is hurtful, shameful, abusive, or demeaning must be brought into the fierce light of truth, and truth can be brutal.

Desmond Tutu / quote

03Undated

We are wired to be caring for the other and generous to one another. We shrivel when we are not able to interact. I mean that is part of the reason why solitary confinement is such a horrendous punishment. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are. (...) The concept of Ubuntu says: A person is a person through other persons.

Desmond Tutu / quote

04Undated

If you are able to talk about your life and the joys and sorrows you have experienced, if you know your story, you are much more likely to be a skillful parent.

Desmond Tutu / quote

05Undated

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.

Desmond Tutu / quote

06Undated

Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God’s grace and God’s love for us… Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others. - God Has a Dream, p. 86.

Desmond Tutu / quote

07Undated

The way to understand any enemy is to realize that, from his perspective, he is not a villain but a hero.

Desmond Tutu / quote

08Undated

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Desmond Tutu / quote

09Undated

So often when people hear about the suffering in our world, they feel guilty, but rarely does guilt actually motivate action like empathy or compassion. Guilt paralyzes and causes us to deny and avoid what makes us feel guilty. The goal is to replace our guilt with generosity. We all have a natural desire to help and to care, and we simply need to allow ourselves to give from our love without self-reproach. We each must do what we can. This is all that God asks of us." - , God Has a Dream, p. 87-88

Desmond Tutu / quote

10Undated

The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn't pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that's why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.

Desmond Tutu / quote

11Undated

When God grabs you by the scruff of the neck then although theoretically you have a freedom to say 'no', in another sense, actually, you can't say no because it's like Jeremiah. 'God, you have cheated me. You called me to be a prophet against the people that I love, and all that I proclaim is words of doom and judgement.' And yet if I say "I will shut up", I can't.

Desmond Tutu / quote

12Undated

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

Desmond Tutu / quote

13Undated

Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.

Desmond Tutu / quote

14Undated

Do your little bit of good where you are it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

Desmond Tutu / quote

15Undated

When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.

Desmond Tutu / quote

16Undated

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

Desmond Tutu / quote

17Undated

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

Desmond Tutu / quote

18Undated

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

Desmond Tutu / quote

19Undated

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.

Desmond Tutu / quote

20Undated

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.

Desmond Tutu / quote

21Undated

God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

Desmond Tutu / quote

22Undated

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 / quote

23Undated

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

Desmond Tutu / quote

24Undated

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 / quote