Quotes from Desmond Tutu

A person is a person because s/he recognizes others as persons.

True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute.

When I feel ashamed, it means I feel there isn't just something wrong with what I've done, there is something wrong with who I am. Shame is often a hidden emotion and it can be paralyzing in its power.

Healing means that our dignity is restored and we are able to move forward in our lives.

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

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

My first point seems overwhelmingly simple: that the accidents of birth and geography determine to a very large extent to what faith we belong.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

the cycle of reprisal and counter reprisal that had characterized their national history had to be broken and that the only way to do this was to go beyond retributive justice to restorative justice, to move on to forgiveness, because without it there was no future.

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.

Forgiveness is the only way to heal ourselves and to be free from the past. Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound to the chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive the person who harmed us, that person will hold the keys to our happiness, that person will be our jailor. When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberator.

We shall be free only together, black and white. We shall survive only together, black and white. We can be human only together, black and white.

When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.

One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God.

People are not born hating each other and wishing to cause harm. It is a learned condition.

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.

Once you have been able to forgive, the final step is to either renew or release the relationship you have with the one who has harmed you. Indeed, even if you never speak to the person again, even if you never see them again, even if they are dead, they live on in ways that affect your life profoundly.

In order to truly forgive oneself, one must either explicitly or implicitly acknowledge that one's behavior was wrong and accept responsibility or blame for such behavior. Without these elements, self-forgiveness is irrelevant and pseudo self-forgiveness becomes likely.

When you set out to change the world, the job seems insurmountable, but each of us can do his or her small part to effect change. We change the world when we choose to create a world of forgiveness in our own hearts and minds.

in the sentiment of Mahatma Gandhi, when we practice the law of an eye for an eye, we all end up blind.

Thus to forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, that greatest good, communal harmony that enhances the humanity and personhood of all in the community.

order to truly forgive oneself, one must either explicitly or implicitly acknowledge that one's behavior was wrong and accept responsibility or blame for such behavior.

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 is a story. . . which is fairly well known, told about when missionaries came to Africa, that they had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. And then they said, "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. And when we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible.