Quotes from Desmond Tutu

People in apartheid South Africa can tell you that God cursed black people when they cursed Him. And so the hermetic people were condemned to be drawers of water and of wood.

God has been incredible in creating us to be persons.

Catharsis returns us to the purpose for which were originally intended - to be called by God to do good - and thus ultimately returns us to ourselves.

When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant.

We are fundamentally good, and evil is an aberration.

I think it is a good exercise to ask oneself, "How would I have wanted to be treated?"

When you nurse a grudge it is not good for your health.

Forgiving is good for your health.

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.

Climate change: Never before in history have human beings been called on to act collectively in defence of the Earth

In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

I'm so, so thrilled that [Pope Francis] is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world.

We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.'

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language... It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.'

To treat anyone as if they were less than human, less than a brother or a sister, no matter what they have done, is to contravene the very laws of our humanity.

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others

Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.

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

Though wrong gratifies in the moment, good yields its gifts over a lifetime.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.