Quotes from Desmond Tutu

We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.

If you recall the happiest moments in your life, they are all from when you were doing something for somebody else.

To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

I mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

You have seen after Katrina just what failures there are in American Society.

I wish that we did have a magic wand which we could wave and hey presto! Magic! Unfortunately life is not like that.

You must show the world that you abhor fighting.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

The pressure to succeed has a lot to do with why people overstep the line. It is a peculiar weakness of western culture where we have made a fetish of success.

I have absolutely no objection to performance and success as long as they don't become false idols and threaten to rule our lives.

Never let anyone make you feel inferior for being who you are. When you live the life you were meant to live, in freedom and dignity

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

In terms of the New Testament the Jews must suffer, therefore we will put it into practice if we will in charge and there will be no sympathy for the Jews when the blacks take over.

As a teacher in order not to have to answer too many questions, you stretch your answers.

Life is more than breath and a heartbeat; meaning and purpose are the life of life.

Life is funny and we are really funny, especially when we get to be hoity toity; we can be so ridiculous. Life is fun.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't.

Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.