Desmond Tutu Quotes of All Time to Inspire You

Filed in Articles, Quote by on April 29, 2022

– Desmond Tutu Quotes –

One way of getting inspiration is by going through some insightful Desmond Tutu quotes. We have a collection of these quotes just for your enjoyment.

desmond tutu quotes

Desmond Tutu, full name Desmond Mpilo Tutu, (born October 7, 1931, Klerksdorp, South Africa—died December 26, 2021, Cape Town), South African Anglican cleric who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his role in the South African anti-apartheid movement.

Desmond Tutu Quotes

1.  “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.”

2. “It isn’t that it’s questionable when you speak up for the right of people with different sexual orientation. People took some part of us and used it to discriminate against us. In our case, it was our ethnicity; it’s precisely the same thing for sexual orientation. People are killed because they’re gay.”

3. “If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”

4. “When you go to the Holy Land and see what’s being done to the Palestinians at checkpoints, for us, it’s the kind of thing we experienced in South Africa. Whether you want to say Israel practices apartheid is immaterial. They are doing things, given their history, you think, “Do you remember what happened to you?” Then they clobber you and say, “You are anti-Semitic.””

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

6. “He’s a tremendous breath of fresh air. The things he [Pope Francis] has done in a short period of time: the fact that he does not live in a huge papal mansion and just dropped by in the dining room where ordinary people have meals. You think of his background, where he didn’t use limousines in South America, that he used public transport. I’m so, so thrilled that he is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world.”

7. “I can’t for the life of me imagine that God would say, ‘I will punish you because you are black; you should have been white. I will punish you because you are a woman; you should have been a man. I punish you because you are homosexual; you ought to have been heterosexual. I can’t, I can’t for the life of me believe that that is how God sees things.”

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8. “We can be human only together. A person is a person to other persons. We so desperately long for all of us to learn that we are meant for one another. We are meant for complementarity.”

9. “If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is WOMEN!”

desmond tutu quotes

10. “We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.”

11. “We are all connected. What unites us is our common humanity. I don’t want to oversimplify things – but the suffering of a mother who has lost her child is not dependent on her nationality, ethnicity or religion. White, black, rich, poor, Christian, Muslim or Jew – pain is pain – joy is joy.”

12. “I don’t often want to speak. I try to be a reasonable person and to be diplomatic, but you go to that place and you see the settlements, you see what has happened to the land that was owned by the Palestinians. have often said to my Jewish friends: “Please just remember where you come from. Remember Yahweh, who said to the Israelites, ‘Treat the alien well with justice.'””

13. “We need other human beings in order to be human.”

14. “I regard Abraham as my ancestor. Some of the greatest inspiration I have got has come from what we call the Old Testament prophets and what Jews would say “our prophets.””

15. “Is Zionism racism? I would say yes. It’s a policy that to me looks like it has very many parallels with racism. The effect is the same. Whether you call it that or not is in a sense irrelevant.”

16. “Love is universal. You don’t have to tell somebody that loving is better than hating. You don’t have to believe in God to know that stealing is bad. All of God’s children and their different faiths help to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God. And certainly Christians don’t have a corner on God. All of us belong to God.”

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

18. “There is no religion in fact that I know that encourages or propagates violence in that its adherents should carry out.”

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

20. “Without forgiveness, there is no future. Forgiveness is not nebulous, impractical and idealistic. It’s thoroughly realistic. It’s real political in the long run.”

21. “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.”

22. “Suffering is part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter or ennoble us. It can ennoble us and become a spirituality of transformation when we find meaning in it.”

23. “I’m absolutely, utterly, and completely certain that God wouldn’t be homophobic. I’d much rather go to hell – I really would much rather go to hell – than go to a homophobic heaven.”

24. “If we are to say that religion cannot be concerned with politics then we are really saying that there is a substantial part of human life in which God’s writ does not run. If it is not God’s, then whose is it? Who is in charge if not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

25. “The heart of the Christian Gospel is precisely that God is the all holy One; the all powerful One is also the One full of mercy and compassion. God is not a neutral God inhabiting some inaccessible Mount Olympus. He is a God who cares about His children and cares enormously for the weak, the poor, the naked, the downtrodden, the despised. God takes their side not because they are good, since many of them are demonstrably not so. He takes their side because He is that kind of God, and they have no one else to champion them.”

26. “All of us experience fear, but when we confront and acknowledge it, we are able to turn it into courage. Being courageous does not mean never being scared; it means acting as you know you must even though you are undeniably afraid.”

27. “There are very good Christians who are compassionate and caring. And there are very bad Christians. You can say that about Islam, about Hinduism, about any faith. That is why I was saying that it was not the faith per se but the adherent. People will use their religion to justify virtually anything.”

28. “Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.”

desmond tutu quotes

29. “Every situation of justice is an occasion where someone is being humiliated and they want to restore their dignity. They think, “I am a human being and I may not be able to defeat these people or destroy them, but I will hit time out at them, because I am not a thing, I am human.””

30. “This is a moral universe, which means that despite all the evidence that seems to be to the contrary, there is no way that evil and injustice and oppression and lies can have the last word. . . that is what has upheld the morale of our people, to know that in the end good will prevail.”

Hope and inspiration might seem far but we hope this article has been able to narrow the gap for you. Don’t forget to share to your preferred social platform.

CSN Team.

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