Desmond Tutu

Bekannte Zitate von Desmond Tutu

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

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

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.

Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.

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

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.

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

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.

But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.

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

Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

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.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

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.

Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.

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.

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

We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

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

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

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.

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

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.